Just 500 Years to Grow Up
by Waifine
Summary: Not yaoi. Too long Goku's been fed scraps of lost memories. Now he's had enough and decides to find his past out for himself. But can he find a place for the ghosts of his past alongside the friends of his present? Can his friends? Sanzo? -Gaiden.Konzen-
1. Too Quiet

**Chapter 1**

**Too Quiet**

Something gnawed at his stomach. It wasn't hunger.

"Hey, guys. I'm hungry," he muttered. Hell, it couldn't hurt to say it, just for good measure.

"Oh wow, now there's a shocker. Next the sky's gonna fall, am I right? Shocker after freakin' shocker."

Goku just stared over his side of the Jeep. His brown haired bangs wiped about his face as they drove in the open Jeep. Unlike most people Goku couldn't exactly just push his bangs out of the way either, as they were pressed to place by a golden diadem – one that had been placed there by the gods no less! And if Goku ever took it off… well, that wouldn't end well for anyone. They hadn't seen a town in two days, and he didn't have the energy to argue. It was that kind of day where nothing was exciting enough to get him hyper (and that really did not take much, so nothing exciting _at all_) and nothing unpleasant enough to make him annoying to pass the time. There was enough food, the weather wasn't too hot or cold, the roads weren't too dusty, and Goku hated it.

It gave him time to think.

Over a year and a half ago, just when they'd all started out on this crazy journey of theirs, he had asked Hakkai and Sanzo why they hated the rain so much. Gojyo had gone and been an asshole by pulling the ol' 'you'll understand when you're older' line. That was a sucker. Well, it had been a year since then: a year of traveling with three of the world's worst reprobates and best people Goku had ever met. Not that he remembered ever meeting too many other people.

Ah... he was thinking again. Damn.

The cock of a gun was the much needed sound that pulled him out of his stupor. "Alright you two. I give you ten seconds to sort out your shit back there and come to your senses. Then I'm blowing your brains out."

"EH? What the hell are you on, ya lousy monk!" Sha Gojyo, the red haired, red eyed half breed who shared the backseat with Goku, lunged forward and grabbed a fist full of the gunner's, Genjo Sanzo's robe. "We haven't done shit!"

"That's better!" With one swift punch under the jaw Gojyo sprawled across the back of his seat next to Goku. Tish. Typical.

Again the gun distracted him from his thoughts. Well, it was practically touching his nose. For lack of anything better to do he crossed his golden eyes and trailed them up the muzzle, up the monk's garb – yes, monk's – and onto the face of Sanzo.

Sanzo…he was gorgeous. Goku didn't care if it was weird for one guy to think of another guy as gorgeous. It just fit. Everyone agreed with him anyway. The man was just too pretty. Everyone always complemented him on his face. However, taking it all in, Goku had to say that there was also something about... his hair.

"Oy! Monkey!"

Goku snapped to attention, and braced his eyes against the molten orbs of violet lava now peering down at him. Sanzo was standing up in the Jeep (he did that a lot for better aim. No, not for better aim at rouge demons – better known as 'youkai.' Better aim at them: Gojyo and himself).

"Wha'?"

"Snap out of it, or I _will _blow that idiot look off your face."

"Eh!?"

"Stop being so annoyingly placid. You're pissing me off! Go," he waived his gun vaguely at Gojyo, "poke him in the eye, or something!"

"Oy, now! What the hell?!"

Goku blinked at him for a moment, then he grinned apologetically. "Sorry man." In the next second he was on top of Gojyo. "FEED ME!"

"WHAT THE HELL!? OUCH! I TOLD YOU NOT TO PULL MY HAIR! _HAIR!"_

…

Sanzo settled back in his chair, satisfied.

"It got you that worried, did it?" Sanzo turned to look at the driver and fourth member of their mismatched band, Cho Hakkai.

"Excuse me?" He asked darkly, slipping his gun back up his sleeve. In the next second he wished he hadn't asked. He did not need Hakkai grating on his nerves along with Goku. Goku was loud and bombastic. Hakkai was quiet and curt. But though their methods were different the results were often the same.

"Goku's silence. You were that worried about it? Usually you welcome silence in the Jeep, however-" snarls and oaths from the backseat blotted out Hakkai's voice for a moment, thank God, "-Goku has been like this for almost two days now, eh?"

"Stop trying to be clever. You just come out as a retard."

And Hakkai just grinned that idiotic way of his. _Demented..._ Sanzo settled down in his seat and allowed the argument from the back to take over. It was a welcome change to the freakish silence that had been tailing them for the past many hours. And he wasn't the only one to notice, though he had probably been the first. Gojyo had tried to goad Goku into a fight at least twice. Even Hakkai sent a zinger his way. No go. Finally, Sanzo had to step into action himself.

And Goku had clicked his heals as he always did.

Gojyo let loose a pearl necklaces of obscenities, ending with "-SANZO!" Gojyo pulled Sanzo back to the here and now as the redhead wrestled Goku down at the same time. "You just _had _to unleash the fiend, didn't you!?"

Sanzo smirked at that one. "Ya. So shoot me, I did."

…

"Hair! My hair, ya damn monkey!

"Stop calling me Monkey, ya purvey water sprite!"

"Then stop being so damn grabby!" Ouch. Honestly, about half an hour ago he had been trying to knock the idiot out of his stupor as much as the next guy, but now he was really regretting Sanzo's getting involved. "Hakkai, how long till we get to the next town?!" Gojyo shot the words out while deflecting one intrusive monkey hand and then another. How many did this chimp have? Wasn't there supposed to be a ration of two per person?

"Rest easy. Judging by this map we'll reach the next one before dusk."

"HURRAY!" suddenly the hands he had been trying to swat away lifted and their owner started to bound from one side of the Jeep to the other.

"You're gonna get yourself thrown out that way, idiot!" Said idiot didn't even hear him. _Jeez._

All in all though, it was a relief to see Goku being his old self again. They four had been with each other for almost two years now, packed like sardines in a can – or Jeep. Gojyo more or less knew when Sanzo or Hakkai turned onto their bad moods. No, not Sanzo's every-day mood. _Real _bad moods. The ever-winner response was 'when it rained.' When it rained Gojyo knew to just slide his share of cigarettes onto Sanzo's bedside table without a word, and then leave the man to himself. His mood always lifted – if you could call his ever-day mood a lift – with the rain.

Then there was Hakkai. Again, his bad moods came with the rain. Well, with Hakkai what he knew to do was to bring him a deck of cards and a six-pack of beer, and then sit and play poker until the rain let up, not talking about anything except the flow of the game. That was Hakkai.

But Goku? What the hell?

Truth be told, the guy – he could hardly call him a kid anymore, creepy as _that _was – just did not have 'bad days.' Every day to him was some celebration of life. It made sense, him having been locked up in a cave for five hundred years. _Ouch. _

No, in all the time that Gojyo had knows Goku there had only been two sorts of situations that got the kid – guy – down. The first was always after power limiter would break. That got to Goku like nothing else. Hell, it would have gotten to Gojyo too if, at the back of his mind, he knew he could snap at any moment and kill of his three companions. That was one thing. The second was Sanzo.

Sanzo was no monk. The only monk-like thing he held to was chastity. Again: what the hell? The guy probably just had some problems down there. After all, how long did you have to know the bastard for before you started thinking 'compensation' every time he pulled out that gun?

No, not a monk. But if anyone had ever come close to being _a god,_ Sanzo had in Goku's eyes.

It was poetic, on some level. Sanzo had given him life. He had freed Goku from the cage he had been in for five hundred years. And Goku had stuck to him. But it also meant that Sanzo had an effect on Goku's life which Gojyo didn't think even Sanzo appreciated. And, considering it was Sanzo, Gojyo and Hakkai had drawn more than one sharp breath when Sanzo's temper wracked a little too close to Goku's soft spots.

For the longest time those had been the only two things that Gojyo could think of that would have put Goku down. His power limiter. And Sanzo.

However, as they drew ever closer to India, something else began to get him down as well. Up until a certain time Gojyo and Goku had hated sharing rooms just about equally. When they all managed to get four separate rooms it was a rare and wonderful occurrence to Gojyo's thought, as it had been to Goku's. But something changed for Goku. Nothing drastic, by any means; just that, when they would all come down from their separate rooms, Goku would look a little paler than usual. They all ignored it the first few times. However, when Goku came tromping down the stairs still holding his _pillow _Hakkai went and asked him about it.

And he'd squeaked. _Squeaked,_ for god's sake! _Goku!_ Fine, he was a monkey and no doubt about it. But he wasn't a mouse.

Another thing. Goku was touchy-feely on any day, but that day – heaven help him if he would ever repeat this to either Sanzo or Hakkai – Goku had actually _cuddled _him in the back seat. No joke. The kid, and yes it was appropriate to use 'kid' here, had looked up at him with those molten-gold-puppy-eyes… and had cuddled him. Now _that_ had been odd.

Since that time… well, Goku had gotten a grip on himself. He never cuddled again, that was for sure. But something else came on. A 'second stage' if you will. Gojyo had been on his way to the room of an inn keeper's daughter when he walked past Goku's room, and heard him scream.

A pointer: When one member of the Sanzo Party screamed, the hyper built in radars of all the others' activated. Another pointer: this was particularly true in respect to Sanzo hearing Goku.

By the time Gojyo was at Goku's bed Sanzo was at the door and Hakkai was only feet behind. But it hadn't been a demon attack that had made Goku scream out and give Gojyo a nie-heart attack. Oh no! Not poisoned food either. It had been _a fucking bad dream._

And what a dream. Writhing, kicking, screaming. Gojyo tried to shake him but Goku only snarled and bit at him in the darken. For a moment… it had almost seemed as if the diadem had come off, and Goku had become that other self. That's when Gojyo had had enough. "_Goku! Oy, GOKU_!" Gojyo had jumped onto of the squirming, yelping chimp and had proceeded to slap him around some._ "Snap out of it man! Pull yourself together!" _Slap, slap, slap.

"_Steady now, Gojyo! That's not helping any!"_ Hakkai had managed to get in somewhere between screams. The whole world was just a mash of sheets, dark blue lightings, cries and… golden eyes. For a second there Gojyo thought Goku had woken up. He wasn't so sure now, looking back on it.

Goku had looked up at him with those wide golden freakish eyes of his. Then he'd squirmed, and Gojyo had gotten off of him to let Goku sit up. That's what Goku did, just sat up in bed, his cheeks all puffy from the hits. He had propped himself up on his elbows, and stared at Gojyo. Then he stared at Hakkai. Finally, at Sanzo, still standing by the door, cool as could be. It had been creepy, the way those eyes fixed on each of them through the dark. In a way… (and Gojyo wasn't one to read into shit like this)… but in a way it had been as if Goku was confirming that they were really there.

Then Goku had reached forward, grabbed Gojyo by the forearm and squeezed. That had been no joke. Awake, Goku was a terrible judge of his own strength when it came to jumping on people, pulling them along, or generally being his usual zany self. Asleep, however, that strength ran _completely_ unchecked, and it had taken Gojyo everything he had not to hiss out at his grip. Again… a grip as if… as if he was making sure that the people in front of him were really there.

Goku had stared at his arm for a while. Hell, Gojyo still had the bruise, plain as day. Then Goku had smiled a little. "Good…. It wasn't real. It wasn't real…"

And then the little son of a bitch had conked out, just like that. Fell back on his pillow like a little baby, leaving everyone else in the room feeling ten years older.

And Goku didn't remember a thing the next morning when they asked him about it. Or at least, Gojyo had believed him when he had blinked blankly back at all the questions. Thing was, Goku wasn't really one to lie. He didn't have any massive secrets, as much as he tried to make that he did – idiot. He had never, to Gojyo's knowledge, had to lie. When he did lie it was in the obvious way of: 'Who ate the months' worth of supplies in one day?!' 'Not me!' But a real lie… Gojyo wouldn't have known a Goku-lie if it danced naked in front of him.

Since then these mood lapses had started. Maybe Gojyo had been imagining Goku's eyes on his bruised arm every so often, but he sure as hell was not imagining the quiet. It was freakin' unnerving. Even if none of the others had noticed the dips in Goku's moods before now, this two day trip of silence must have alerted them well enough.

The sooner they got to town, the sooner he could get out of this backseat with the Monkey Mute, the sooner he could find himself some hot pair of breasts and thighs, and the sooner he could make up for all this quiet by making _a lot_ of noise.

…

"We're here." Hakkai breathed out the words with a sigh relief he never believed would follow a quiet ride in the Jeep. Quiet. Had there ever been a word more overrated? Not to his knowledge.

"All right!" Goku jumped over his side of the Jeep. "Feels good to stretch my legs again," he said, kicking his feet about and raising a dust cloud around him. For a moment Hakkai just smiled at him. Good. He was at least putting on a fair face for Sanzo. Hakkai didn't need to be mother to _two_ sulking boys right now. "Well, what are you guys waiting for?"

Hakkai turned a little to see that both Sanzo and Gojyo had been staring at Goku too. _Naturally._

"Waiting for this damn dust to settle, idiot!" Gojyo heaved himself out of the Jeep. "So stop kicking it up!" He landed heavily on the road… kicking up his own eruption of dry dirt. And then he headed for Goku…

"Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow! Watch it man! That hurts! I'm hungry as hell! OUCH!"

"Hungry, eh?! Here. Knuckle sandwich. Just for you!"

Sanzo got out of the car without a word. He probably didn't want to get another cross examination from Hakkai. That was fine. Hakkai knew Sanzo could handle sulking spells. He and Gojyo could as well, and the good thing about all being together was that the sulking spells never lasted long. It was a really blessing, even if the others never admitted to it.

But Goku… he was another matter. Of course they had all seen him upset, but it was either something that they were all upset about on account of their journey – a death of a new found acquaintance for example – or it was something that Sanzo had incurred and could cure with a pat on the head or a reassuring word.

This, however, seemed completely independent from himself, Gojyo and even Sanzo. And, as Hakkai clambered out of the Jeep and waited for it to transform back into Hakuryu, his pet dragon, he recognized that it scared him a little. Fear wasn't anything new. Hell, it was necessary when traveling down a road where every paving stone hid a youkai. Though defeating assassins had lost its edge a long while ago, only a fool would have gone to bed completely unafraid and un-alert. No, fear was not new to him, though the only time he had ever tasted it in front of Goku – indeed, the time he had tasted fear most potently was _in front_ of Goku – was when Goku's power limiter had come off and he had become the Great Sage Equal to Heaven: Seiten Taisen Son Goku.

However, this was a very different fear. Quieter. Hakkai did not believe in premonition. Gojyo had told him it was pointless and indeed, it would only have driven him mad with thought of Kanan. Still, something was in the air that Goku breathed and that they all shared with him…

Hakkai just wished it wasn't so quiet, so that he could hear, rather than sense, the warning.

…

"Merciful Goddess?"

"Hm?" One of the Five Powers of Heaven looked up at Jiroushin with as lazy an eye as any to be found in the place. The only difference between the Goddess and everyone else was that she made no mystery of her complete and utter BORDOM.

"Something is occurring in the Lower World. If I may impose upon your wisdom: What?"

Long lush black hair, beautiful eyes, and a smile that could tease to madness. It had hard to remember sometimes that she was more than just a woman, but had other body parts as well. Well, at least it would have been hard to remember, if not for- "Very good, Jiroushin!" The Goddess didn't even try to keep the smirk from sliding onto her face. "You've finally begun to have an eye for this sort of peeking, despite all your protests."

The man stayed silent and sour. Grey haired but still entirely upright, he was the epitome of dignity, and an absolute contrast to the deity he served. Oh, she did love picking on him! Hunph. It was really the only thing to do apart from watching them.

Them. The Sanzo Party. The Rebels. What did the names matter? The people were the same.

The spirit was the same.

"It would seem," she said, turning in her chair so that her legs dangled off of one arm, "that our little chimp is stirring the muck, hm?"

She watched for a moment the man remained silent, battling Dignity and Curiosity. She had worn him down over the years. Curiosity got the better of him. _Tish._ Would it have been the same five hundred years ago?

Probably. She was over romanticizing Jiroushin.

"But, Merciful Goddess, the boy's memory was sealed away in these very halls. There is no possible way that he could have retraced them without traveling up to Heaven himself: a feet utterly impossible for-"

"Not memories."

"…I beg your pardon?"

"The memories are not the troubles that are coming to him now." She smirked into her pond of lilies through which she saw all the trappings of the lower world. "How long has he been traveling with those three? Almost two years. And how long since he was released from his prison by his Genjo Sanzo? Almost seven. He's not a boy anymore. He's killed how many? Traveled how far? I'd say that he's been running for so long that he's finally begun to get caught up by it… And remember, all of those encounters he's had. His diadem coming off. Meeting Homura. Traveling to India, the last place in the Lower World that Nataku ever visited. It all adds up."

She turned to Jiroushin and almost snorted out in laughter, so caught up was he in her rambling. Dear man. "The flashes of memories that open themselves to him when he takes off his power limiter, the hollow feeling that he has carried through all of time that there was 'something' he needed to protect. In short, not the memories, but the very weight of his past is pushing down on him. He's run from it for years, hiding in the little joys of first Sanzo and then the Sanzo Party. Now he's grown up, and is old enough to take that weight and carry it himself.

"Ever more urgently he's haunted by the guilt of having forgotten and the need to remember. But to do that… he has to know exactly _what it is_ he is to carry out. It a voyage of self discovery, or so I've heard. It happens to living, changing things."

"Truly, Merciful Goddess, your foresight into the human world is awing," Jiroushin said, bowing deeply.

"Jiroushin."

'Yes, Merciful Goddess?"

"You do know that it's entirely plausible that the kid just has a bad bought of indigestion and is feeling poorly, right?"

…

**Now, I don't know how far this story will go. But please tell me what you think so far. If I continue this there will be fluff! There will be angst! There will be jealousy. This is not a yaoi fan fiction, but if it makes you happy to 'read between the lines,' by all means. **


	2. Yes

**Chapter 2**

"**Yes."**

Nii Jieni shifted in his seat gingerly, squinting at the screen in front of him with an unusually plain amount of annoyance. _Damn _that bitch could scratch. He 'hadn't been delivering,' she had told him. Hadn't been delivering? What? The Sanzo Party? Tish. Didn't she see how inconceivably _boring _it would be if they died off now?

Still, he supposed that now was as good a time as ever to finish them off. While he would have liked to observe them for a little while longer, the esthetical appearance of his body came first, and a few more nights with the displeased she-creature might just screw him over for life.

Pain in the ass.

So, the question was: how? Of course, he had several plans up his sleeve all waiting to be tested, but if he was forced into destroying the Sanzo Party this early on, he was at least going to go all out in the best possible fashion.

So, what to do? What to do? He couldn't use Kougaiji. That was for certain. Not after he had seen that 'light.' Why did they all, without fail, follow that little insignificant light?

Nii sat up straight as a thought pricked him uncomfortably similarly to nails. He winced a little. _Without fail… that light…_ He yanked off his glasses, and rubbed the bridge of his nose of his fingertips. What was it? What was it that he'd once heard? He brought his files on the Sanzo Party up on his computer screen. _Alright, very good._ He followed a lead which lead his rather quickly into different myths and legends.

He found what he had been looking for. He smirked.

_Oh yes._

_Yes, follow that light, and leave behind… everything._ This would be fun. After all, just because he had failed with the Rabbit Prince, why not experiment with the Monkey King?

_What's precious to you?_ He couldn't help it. He full out grinned. This deserved a smoke. _What's precious to you…_ It felt so good to have cause to think that again. He puffed out a cloud, and it wafted up into the dark rib-cage construction. _You should never let go of what's precious to you…_

_But what happens, when you are no longer precious to him? What then?_

_Eh? Genjo Sanzo?_

_Keep watching, Koumyou, because I'm about to screw your pupil's life over in the worst of all possible ways._

---

Goku rubbed this thumb along the rest of his fingers, as if about to snap them all in one go. He didn't though. The rubbing just gave off a dry rustling sound of callused skin on callused skin.

It was a tick.

Sanzo had told him never to develop a tick. 'Someone who watches you long enough will be able to notice it and use it to their advantage.' A person was supposed to be hard to read, and a tick was like a decoder that screamed: 'I'm nervous!' 'I'm shaken!' 'I'm disoriented!' or 'I'm lost!'

Ya, he definitely had to work off this tick. Goku flexed out his fingers, and then clenched them into a fist. But the rustling continued. This, however, was the rustling of paper. The lady behind the desk was looking through the register book.

"It seems that we don't have any more single rooms available. I'm sorry. There are only doubles."

"That's fine," Sanzo said, handing the golden credit card over the counter. "Make them next to each other."

"Yes sir."

Finally, Goku let his fist unclench, his fingers exhausted and relaxed and not at all tempted to return to their rubbing. _Thank goodness._ Still, he had to act as if he was as pissed off as the rest of them.

"Oy, Hakkai~"

Goku was pulled out of himself as Gojyo moseyed past him to drape an arm around Hakkai. He put a hand up to Hakkai's ear and hissed out, in a very audible whisper, _"I got a really good case of wine from that last waitress chick. If you save me from the Monkey of SnoresTown, I might share~"_

Goku just rolled his eyes and sighed in exasperation. Hell, he didn't need to exact any revenge. Sanzo wouldn't be pleased when he realized that Gojyo had disturbed the roommate arraignment. That, and the case of good wine which he would be missing. Yup, Sanzo would kick Gojyo's ass. Sanzo was… already making his way to the staircase that led to their rooms. If he had heard Gojyo – and he had definitely heard him – he hadn't reacted.

What the…

"Oy! Sanzo!"

Sanzo turned, cigarette sticking out of his mouth, eyes half closed. "Eh?" cracked its way out of the unclosed corner of his mouth.

"…Let's go to a restaurant! We haven't been in a descent place for two days!"

"Restaurant?" Gojyo stuck in. "Screw that! I say bar!"

"You know," Hakkai smiled, "we could go to a joint place. I mean, Goku_ is_ about nineteen."

Somewhere in that conversation Sanzo turned to looking more sullen. It was probably at the recognition that he couldn't just escape to his room with a local paper.

"Fine. But we're not going to any shit bar."

"WHAT?!" Gojyo was in outrage. Ha!

---

Nineteen.

_Damn._

Sanzo cast half a glance at the idiot monkey as they walked out of the inn and on to the little hole-in-the-wall Hakkai had spotted on the way into town_. He isn't even a head shorter than me now, _he realized. _What is it, half a head? No. At least three quarters. Ya, he's defiantly not jus half a head shorter. _

_Damn. _

Goku had been about thirteen-looking when he had found him in that cave. A very, very immature thirteen, but a thirteen none the less. And he had been barley higher than Sanzo's waist.

_Damn. _

And now he was just half a head shorter than him. Correction: Three quarters.

_Damn, damn, and damn. _

He was growing up. Goku, the monkey idiot, was growing up. He had stood stark still in time for five hundred years in that god-created prison, and now he was shooting up much, much too fast. It pissed Sanzo off.

"_Reeeestaaaauraaaaant~"_ Goku's obnoxious voice threatened to blow his eardrums. But hey, he had been dealing with that voice even before he had met the monkey.

They were seated and eating, and Sanzo had his gun in hand, his very aura daring either Goku or Gojyo to try and swipe something off of_ his_ plate. The routine meal commenced. Chew, glare, shoot, glare, shout, hit someone with a paper fan, glare at Hakkai for laughing, hit, shoot at Gojyo, shout at Goku, chew, swallow.

No doubt about it. It was with a great sigh of relief that Sanzo always finished his meal, and leaned back in his seat leaving Goku and Gojyo to forage over the last of the scraps. Honestly, he felt as if eating burned calories rather than refueled them. He understood that Gojyo had not exactly had the fairest upbringing in the land, but whoever had taught Goku table manners had done a piss poor job of it.

"S'cuse me."

_Oh shit. A female._ Sanzo didn't even need to look up from his empty plate to already foretell what was to come. If Gojyo thought he was going to hold them up for another day with his antics, he could rethink that, fast, unless of course he wanted to eat Hakuryu's dust.

And here went the water sprite: "Why _hello,_ miss-"

"Are you Son Goku?"

Sanzo's eyes snapped up.

His first thought was that she looked older than Goku. His second was that _everyone _looked older than Goku. She just had a lot of makeup on. A teenage brat. A teenage brat, with a purse that looked as if it had had a makeover all to itself, that was giving Goku bated-eyelashes. _Oh _god_!_

"Ya. What's up?" Goku blinked at her, a little flustered. He whipped his mouth hastily… with the back of his hand. _Idiot._

She smiled, with a poor attempt at shyness which Goku completely fell for. _IDIOT._ "I knew it was you! Everyone was saying that the Sanzo Party was passing through here, and I thought 'I've just got to see this one!' and," she slid her way around the table, passed Gojyo's chair, and passed Hakkai's, (fortunately for her, she had gone around the table that did not have Sanzo) to him, "they say you defeated a _god." _

_Holy mother f- _…nothing against Goku, but how desperate did you have to be to hit on a kid who looked ready for nursery school_? _Sanzo took another look at Goku. _Ya…_

"I…" Goku looked utterly wrong footed. A vehement flush was dappling his cheeks, slithering across his nose, and spreading itself about his entire face.

"I've been wanting to meet you forever," she said breathily. "I mean, you and your friends are legend. All the girls have _someone_ they like. And you…We're the same age, ya' know? And you just sounded _so. cute." _Couldn't this have happened _on the way_ to the restaurant? Sanzo felt fiscally nauseated. Gojyo mimicked that kind of 'girl talk' sometimes. It freaked the hell out of him.

Sanzo look at Hakkai and Gojyo. Well, if he had put Hakkai's look of shock with Gojyo's look of outrage, that would pretty much have been how he felt. A profanity-armed comment was about to cough itself out of him – something involving pedophilia – when that little 'Nineteen' decided to pop its nasty little head back into his mind.

_Holy shit._ Goku… was legal.

Genjo Sanzo the 31st of China had, up until that moment, been quite certain that he had lived though most of the mentally scaring experiences that this world could offer. That was before this last thought stuck him like a hammer. Suddenly, his mind was full of an explosion of different thoughts, many of which – no, all of which – he had never even _dreaded _thinking.

_Oh god, what if Goku gets a girlfriend? Shit. I'm his guardian-slash-parent…thing. Does that mean… oh _god,_ does that mean he'd bring her 'home' to 'meet the folks?' I never agreed to this._

No, he had certainly never agreed to Goku's growing up. It had never been in the bargain. He had followed that nagging voice that had called to him all the way up some mountain and to the god forsaken – _literally_ god forsaken – cave where the little Heretic Child had been imprisoned. He had taken the boy in, not out of the goodness of his heart, but because it was the only thing he could do to stop that nagging, pleading voice. (It had occurred to him afterward that he could have just shot Goku, but the realization was late in coming, when they were already back at the Temple and… and… Hell, what would he have done with the body? Anyway, he hadn't shot him.) He had raised the idiot. Fed the idiot. Learned the idiot's likes and dislikes by virtue of the idiot's constant complaints. The idiot had become more familiar to him than his own shadow.

And now this familiar idiot Goku had had the audacity to change without Sanzo's permission, or even his realization.

And this random tart, who wore way too much makeup, and looked way too old for him, was flirting with his little idiot. _Ohhh _he was going to shoot something _sooooon~_ It wasn't as if he had not been given short stab-like reminders that Goku was growing up. There was that one time Gojyo had shot off something about a 'rebellious stage.' The speed at which Goku had strengthened before he fought Homura had also been jaw-slackening. But that had all been 'within Sanzo's scope.' Girls were not 'within his scope,' and so he could not simply mesh them into his routine as he had done with Gojyo's stupid comment, or Goku's battle.

"-and all my friends said I couldn't do it, but here I am, and…would you like to hang out?" She flapped her eyelashes at bullet speed. Bullet. Oh, Sanzo liked that word. _Bullet._

The air was thick enough to write the word 'silence' in it, and have it stick.

"What's your name?" Of course. Goku _would _want to know the arbitrary ditz's name when he met her.

She was right next to his chair now, and leaned forward much too close. Maybe if Sanzo had had any experience with women he wouldn't have been so tense. He didn't know. Maybe if he knew about women he could have slipped from his outrage and shock into enjoyment and amusement as Gojyo and Hakkai had clearly done. (It was stamped onto their faces.)

However, the closest Sanzo had ever come to women was that one time he had been kissed while unconscious – and no, Gojyo had not allowed him to live in happy ignorance of the event – and the other time was when he had woken up to find the Merciful Goddess herself straddling him.

Another detail Gojyo had not spared him was that the Merciful Goddess was a hermaphrodite. Still, it was the closest Sanzo had ever come to a woman, even if she had just_ looked _like a woman. And those two encounters had been reason enough – as if he had ever needed a reason for any of the shit he did – to mistrust women was a whole.

Though, in all honest, it wasn't as if he trusted men any more than he did women.

The girl smiled two rows of perfectly straight teeth that would have made excellent target practice – knocking one tooth out at a time. "It's Rui Liu. Sound's nice doesn't it?"

"Ye…yeah." Goku had slumped in his seat, head flat against the back of the chair. Sanzo was giving this Liu chick ten seconds to restore the monkey his personal space. Then the gun was coming out.

She didn't. Instead, she leaned forward even further, giving Goku a flush look down her shirt. And because Sanzo knew Goku just that well, he could just see the thought 'meat buns' floating into his mind. More. imagery. he. did. not. need.

"Can I tell you something?"

"Ye…yeah."

She then whispered something in his ear.

Several things happened in the next blink of an eye. Gojyo whistled. Sanzo pulled out his gun. And Goku stood up.

"Guys," he said, his own voice a little breathless now. "I- I'll see you at dinner."

"Yay! Goku's-" She straightened out herself, and clapped her hands together. And then she saw Sanzo. Sanzo just sat there, now feeling like a bit of an idiot holding the gun. He hated feeling like an idiot. Well, he had been planning to get on Goku's case ever since that-all-too-quiet, pain-in-the-ass, two-day ride.

"Ya? And who the hell said you could leave?" he sneered, letting his eyes turn to Goku only after he had let this ditz wilt a little under his gaze. "Stop giving yourself airs, you black-hole-of-a-stomach. She's probably just got you confused with Gojyo." Normally Sanzo would have been glad of a chance to get the idiot out of his hair, if only for a few hours. But he was irked right now, and that didn't mix well with logic. Right now, there was only one logic: shoot something.

"No I haven't!" she said defensively, pouting a little in a way that someone as much of an idiot as Goku might have thought _'cute.'_ Ahh… nauseating. And then she, as if he was her ever-lasting-love and Sanzo was the evil father that was trying to keep them apart, latched onto his arm. "A lot of my mom's friend's like Gojyo. I like Goku."

Again: dead silence.

Hakkai always smiled, so it was impossible to accuse him of anything now as his face split in half. Goku, however, was having extreme difficulties keeping the twitching corners of his moth from hitching too high up. Even Sanzo felt a slight smack of satisfaction at that one. Alright, hearing Gojyo being read his rights wasn't as good as shooting something, but it came close.

"Eh, let's go." And with the tickling of a bell Goku, the chimp-idiot or a child Goku, had steered the random 'cute' girl out of the restaurant. ….What just happened?

Oh, damn, he needed to shoot something now.

"Oy, Sanzo." Gojyo snapped his fingers in front of Sanzo's face. His eyes finally shot away from the door through which Goku had just walked out, and onto Gojyo. _Target practice._

"There's something I need to- HOLY HELL, MAN! DON'T ACTUALLY SHOOT IT!"

---

The second they were out of the inn Goku tried to turn and face her and get out of her what on earth she had meant by what she had said. Instead, she had just gripped onto his arm more tightly, and kept him walking.

He tried to distract himself while she took her marry sweet time to find a place to talk. He hated waiting for Gojyo or Hakkai or Sanzo. But here…well, considering what she had whispered to him, waiting was the way it had always been. He could wait a little longer. A little.

So, distraction…She was really pretty. Goku felt kind of weird walking with this girl on his arm. He wasn't sure if he was leading her or she was leading him. On one hand, he could have made her stop at any moment. On the other, with purse in one hand and Goku in the other, he felt kind of like an accessory.

He wasn't sure where he was supposed to look. Was he supposed to look in front of him, or down at her? He decided on looking down on her. What was her name? Liu. She had black hair that she had tied into three tight thin braids. They went down to the small of her back. Where the black hair ended, a red bandana began wrapping around her forehead and…that was about as much of her as he could look at from this angle. End of distraction.

Okay, 'a little' had already ended. Now he wanted answers.

"Hey," he said, stopping. They had been walking for some ten minutes, and were well on the other side of town now. It was some small, open, shabby square. From the residue smell Goku could tell this had been a demon quarter of town. No one would bother them here, and Liu didn't try to keep walking. The two of them stared ahead at the pealing plaster, arms still linked. There was a quiet rustling. Goku had begun rubbing his fingers again. "…So… you're saying you have a chakra on your forehead…"

He saw out of the corner of her eye that she nodded.

"Show me?"

Liu reached up her other hand, untied her bandana and turned to look at him. She had let go of his arm. There, plain as day, on her forehead, was a red diamond.

Something in Goku's stomach hitched. He pressed his fingers into a cluster at their tips.

"You really tell me what I want to know?"

"Yes."

---

**The way this works is that I'll be taking bits from both the anime and the manga, so bare with me there. Was this alright? Did I pull the girl off alright? More importantly, did I pull **_**Sanzo**_** off alright?**


	3. And the Voice Vanished

**I have done a bit of editing. So, the Chapter Three you had before, "Yes," is now the Chapter Two. This is an all together knew Chapter Three. **

**Sorry for the delay. I wanted to wait for the last chapter of Gaiden to come out so that I knew I wasn't heading off into some unknown direction. No spoilers in this chapter. **

**---**

**Chapter 3**

**And the Voice Vanished**

"Hey, Hakkai."

"Hm?"

"Is it just me, or is Sanzo completely out of it?"

"Really Gojyo, what _can_ you mean?"

Gojyo, who had been staring with not-so-wrapped attention at the off-white ceiling of their room, tilted his head to look at Hakkai who, at this moment, was sitting slummed at a table, nursing a cup of hot tea… with a little shot of whiskey in it.

The wine was a lie.

"Well, whoever did send her was laughing at us. I mean, how obvious do you _get?!"_

"…"

Gojyo sat up and crossed his legs on the mattress. He ruffled his hair, thinking hard. "I don't wanna say Kougaiji because, seriously, the man respects us more than that. But whoever did… and Sanzo not even picking up on it… Damn, someone's having a_ good_ laugh."

Hakkai had not said a word. He had, however, turned his seat a little to face Gojyo, who now looked straight at him. "How out-of-it did he have to _be _to not be able to tell she was an assassin?"

Hakkai sipped his tea. Gojyo leaned back onto the wall that his bed was pushed up against. "He should know that no one on our little road trip ever knows who we actually are until we get there. I mean, that's what the whole _'we expect a divine monk and royal ass-kissing disciples' _spiel is _about _in every town we get to! No squirt would know all that about us! And…" he smirked, "that gag about me was just _lame."_

"If you're really all that antsy about it, why didn't you say anything at the restaurant?" And thus the Green Eyed Sage graced the Lowly Child of Sin with his wisdom. Yey.

For a moment the only sound in the room was the dysfunctional rotating of the fan in the corner. Gojyo raised a red eyebrow. "Dude. I know Goku can't tell one from the other, but honestly, he can take care of himself. And even if he can't, he's got Sanzo. And if the Mighty Monk himself can't tell a fangirl from an assassin… It ain't my problem."

Hakkai smirked as he stood up to get some more tea.

Whiskey.

"In all honesty, I think he was just a bit put off by the fact that Goku could even attract a girl, which the sender of the assassin was probably counting on. After all, Goku _is_ growing up pretty fast, isn't he?"

"Ya, whatever," Gojyo looked back up at the ceiling. So they had played into yet another evil idiot's hands. So what? Happened every day. But the idea of his fate-chosen kid-brother growing somehow didn't sit well with Gojyo.

"So you won't tell Sanzo?"

"Let the idiot figure it out for himself."

"So why have you been harping on it?"

"What else am I supposed to do until you get up the sense to offer to refill my glass? I ain't getting up."

"Ah."

"And don't dilute it with that crap either."

"Just tea then?"

"…"

---

It was after dinner than Sanzo heard Goku's footsteps coming down the hall. He was sitting with Hakkai in his and Gojyo's room, discussing the best rout through the labyrinth of ravines that were just some miles beyond this town. Even nature seemed to be working against them, damnit.

From the stairs Gojyo and Hakkai's room was closer than Sanzo and Goku's. So, when Sanzo called out for Goku to 'get his ass in here,' Goku stepped into the door frame, still holding a package in his hands, much as he tried to conceal the bulky thing behind him.

"So, how did it go?" Sanzo, his mouth open, and his own question still lodged in his throat, turned to look at Hakkai.

"Ya," Gojyo, who had plopped his feet up on the table – much to Hakkai's annoyance when his boots got dirt on the mat – suddenly sat up and righted his feet back onto the floor. "No broken bones, monkey?" Sanzo would have thought the man was joking… _would_ have…

Goku blinked at them. "What the hell are ya talking about ya perverted cockroach?! We went out ta' dinner!"

Sanzo watched Hakkai and Gojyo exchange meaningful glances before he felt himself asking what he thought was the obvious question. "Where did you get the change?"

_He _was now at the receiving end of Goku's idiotic blinking. "Eh, odd jobs? You guys don't really think I just sit around all day and night, do ya? There's only so much time we spend in restaurants." He ambled into the room, package still clamped awkwardly at his side, and in one fluid motion had swiped Gojyo's – refilled – cup of 'tea.'

"Oy! Monkey! That's-"

Gojyo never got the sentence out, for at that moment Goku was felled down by a paper fan. Gojyo just barely rescued the cup in time.

"What the hell was that for?" Forgetting himself for a moment, Goku threw the package into full view as he used it as a shield against Sanzo.

"What's in the package?" a chorus of voices asked at once. Sanzo closed his eyes momentarily. Great. Now he was thinking in sync with Hakkai and Gojyo. His brain really_ had_ melted from during the course of this journey.

Something very odd happened then. Goku was always a ball of energy, at least up until the last few days. Hell, when they had first started out on this pain-in-the-ass mission, one of the things that Sanzo had dreaded most had been being in a confined space with Goku for extended periods of time. He had avoided that by throwing Gojyo under the truck instead or, as it turned out, in the back of the jeep.

Even in his sleep Goku would twitch and murmur and snore a little. The idiot just could not stay quiet. Which was why, when he froze up like that in the middle of Hakkai and Gojyo's room, Sanzo knew something was very, very off. Or rather, given that Goku had been unreasonably quiet of late, he knew that this outright silence meant that something was even _more_ off.

"Kid, you can try to look cool later, when it doesn't come off so lame." Gojyo emptied his reclaimed cup in one swig. He obviously had not noticed Goku's stillness. _Drunken idiot. _He had. However, become uncharacteristically serious. "But you aren't really trying to tell us that chick _wasn't_ an assassin, are you?"

Right. Now Sanzo was downright confused. Sanzo hated being confused, and this was the second time since dinner that he had been confused. Someone was going to die.

"Now," Gojyo set his glass on the table. "Let's cut through the crap. What'd she give you?"

"I…" Goku clutched onto the package more tightly. "I don't know what you mean. She wasn't an assassin and-"

"Fork over the package you idiot!"

"No! S'none of your business! Just lay off Gojyo! You just didn't like her because she said the obvious – that you're a middle-aged lady sort of guy!"

"SAY WHAT?! NOW LISTEN HERE YOU-"

"What's in the package," Sanzo finally pinpointed the spot on which to vent, and if looks could kill the parcel in Goku's hands would have died a hundred death's right then.

"…s'none of your business either…"

"…What?" He felt a mussel under his eye twitch.

"I said," Goku took a deep breath, "It's none of your business any more than it is the prevy cockroach's!"

"…Give it to me or I will kill your sorry ass."

"Now _there's_ one I haven't heard before! If you really want to know about that girl so much, then just ask!" He wasn't letting go of it, damn him.

"Who the hell wants to know about your little girlfrie-?!"

"Yes Goku, please tell us about her," Hakkai's voice dunked on them like a pail of cold water. Sanzo had almost forgotten he was there.

After a whole afternoon of getting hit over the head about how much Goku had grown up, Sanzo was suddenly struck by how…_small_ he looked, standing in the middle of the room with three men staring him down.

And he hated that look on Goku's face. It as the look with which Goku usually came to Sanzo when the monks had been picking on him, or when he had a moral dilemma about something that had happened on the journey. Now, however, it seemed that Sanzo was the one putting that face _on_ Goku.

He felt himself about to say 'Tish, whatever, I don't care.' Or 'You're making a bid deal out of nothing,' or something like that. He did that when the drama wasn't worth the problem it was happening over.

But Goku opened his mouth and said, "She knows a bit about my past."

The blood chilled in Sanzo's veins.

"I mean, she doesn't know my past, but she knows _about_ it. She knows how I can sort of… open up and let it come back. And apparently there's a document or something that actually has everything written on it. It was written by some Dragon King… guy, and…"

"So, that's how it is?"

Goku, who hadn't met anyone's eye, now looked at Sanzo, "Wha?"

"We're in the middle of this pain in the ass life-threatening mission and you decide that _now _you want to go on a side trip down amnesia lane?"

Goku swallowed, and something akin to guilt – but certainly _not_ guilt – pinched at Sanzo. "I just…"

"Is _that _what you've been PMSing about for days?!" Before he knew it he was on his feet and positively hissing at the stupid monkey child across the room from him. Day after day of that stupid quiet in the back seat, who knew how many weeks of that sheepish look on the monkey's face, and for what? Not because of any shit that had happened. Not because of anything here and now and real. No, the little bastard had been having some sort of teen-journey-of-self-discovery issues, and Sanzo had had it up to here with the crap. He had never signed up to take any of this junk. He had never sighed up to be the role-model father figure. And he had certainly never sighed up for the nerve wracking experience that was Goku.

And Goku actually blurted back, "Hell, I want to know, Sanzo!" He _actually_ shouted back, the little son of a–

"Goku, have you ever considered how weighty those memories might–"

"Hakkai, look, I…You killed a thousand demons, and they _changed your name!_" Goku, slight wiry Goku, was clutching that package so hard it looked as if he was going to tare it in two.

"Hey now," Gojyo tried to cut in. Goku was treading on glass now, but the idiot just plowed on.

"You got a new _name!_ And that was for annihilating a fortress full of yokai! And…and for that they changed your name…" He was wheezing a little now. He had eyes for Hakkai only. It was a little unnerving, to see the way they two were looking at each other. It seemed that, of everyone, he had decided to make Hakkai understand – that pissed Sanzo off more than he would ever admit. At the same time, it looked as if Hakkai would kill him if Goku didn't finish his explanation, having begun it the way he had. The 'this had better be worth it' look Hakkai was giving Goku just kind of made Sanzo a little jittery not to get caught in the crossfire.

"What did…" Goku swallowed hard, "What did_ I_ have to do to get locked away, without even _remembering _my past, for _five hundred fucking years?"_

No one said anything. That last statement threw things more into perspective than Sanzo cared to admit. It was true that as the punishments of the gods went, Hakkai had only to get a good word from Sanzo and a changed name, and that was for slaughtering one thousand demons. What had Goku done to be locked away on a desolate mountain for five hundred years, without even the memory of his past? It also threw into perspective that Goku had actually been thinking about this for a while. How long? How many months now, while they had been traveling West and living in the here and now, had Goku's mind been elsewhere altogether?

"You guys…Sanzo…" He was pulled from his thoughts by that same voice which had called out to him six years ago. "Please… will you help me with this?" those golden eyes fixed on him. He had once heard Homura say that golden eyes were the mark of a heretic. Sanzo didn't know anything about that. "I… I need this…" Small, shaking, clinging to him. Suddenly Sanzo was filled with the overwhelmingly selfish desire for Goku to always stay that way. Perhaps all parents felt like that, but unlike most parents he could actually hold on to some extent. After all, if Goku got his memories back, what then? What new faces would he turn to in his mind's eye? He, Sanzo, would no longer be his only ray of light. Suddenly it struck him how _pathetically_ he had come to rely on that…

"Go to your room." It had to be one of the lamest things Sanzo had ever said, but right now he just needed to get the upper hand on the monkey who was _still_ three quarters of a head shorter than him.

The flinch that rippled over those narrow shoulders cut more deeply than he would have liked to admit.

Goku then smirked wryly. When had he learned to do that? "Gee," he rasped, "Thanks. Funny how that was exactly where I was heading before I got side tracked by all your bullshit quest-y-ions." He had rushed the last few words and still his voice had cracked on the last syllable. Package still in hand, he turned out of the room, and slammed the door behind him.

Sanzo turned back to the map expectantly. He had to endure a few moments of feeling Hakkai's expectant stare into the top of his head before the debate of which rout to take was reopened. Just then Sanzo would have liked to lose himself in all those little blue and purple lines.

---

Goku woke himself up in the middle of the night. He could do that. He would have just waited for Sanzo to fall asleep, but the thing about Sanzo was that he always seemed to wait until Goku was asleep before he fell asleep himself. It was a habit that had probably developed when he had first pulled Goku out of the cave.

Back then Goku would sometimes crawl into bed with Sanzo when he was scared. He had often talked Goku to sleep. Never, at any of those times, could Goku remember being alone with a sleeping person. Whenever he had whispered Sanzo's name, the monk had responded – albeit, often with no more than a grunt or a quiet insult. But still, he had always let Goku know that he was there, watching over him.

Great. He was going sentimental. Goku really did not need to go remembering junk like that. Not right now. Sanzo had basically said he wouldn't help him….and Goku couldn't just keep on living with the dreams. That had been why it was so easy to wake up again tonight: the knowledge that, in a while, the dreams he could never remember when he woke up would become… _memories. _

Despite whatever Sanzo and Gojyo always complained in his being a 'stupid awkward monkey' Goku could be quieter than shadows. Still, as he crept over to Sanzo's bed, package under his arm, he felt half certain the monk would wake up. Perhaps he really _was _that quiet. Or perhaps Sanzo didn't sense his aura as a threat, and trusted him.

Again, Goku did his utmost to squash that idea. He had already made up his mind. And it wasn't like he was Gojyo with his lighter or Hykayu the Jeep. He wasn't a part of Sanzo's daily routine, really. He wouldn't be _that _missed… He hoped not anyway. He didn't want to cause any more drama. Then again kind of bothering him too: the idea that Sanzo w_ouldn't _miss him. _God, I'm still such an immature brat, aren't I._

Quietly as he could, his toes feeling out for rickety floorboards, Goku got to the side of Sanzo's bed. Slowly, ever so slowly, he slid open the drawer in his bedside table and pulled it out the Maten Scripture. _He's always telling me how he didn't want to get landed with me in the first place._ _Okay, so maybe this is kinda late in the game, and I've already been enough of a pain for him, but better late that never._ Out of the room, down the hall, down the stairs, and Goku was standing in the deserted common room of the inn.

He needed to find a place to do this. After all, he didn't know what would happen to him and he didn't want the Maten Scripture to be just lying around where the first yokai to come in would just be able to pick it up and take it. He looked around the room. It was lit by the dim light of coals from the fireplace. They were more hindrance than help. It was still too dark for the coals to be any use, and it was too light to just get used to the dark. Goku squinted back at the staircase. A closet just under the stairs. That should work.

It was only in front of the closet, the little expanse of darkness and brooms looming in front of him, that Goku swallowed. He realized suddenly that he was shaking. _What am I doing?_ Package in one hand, Maten Scripture in the other… _What the hell am I doing?!_ He could still go back. He could go back, put the Maten Scripture back in its place, even throw the package over the coals on his way upstairs. And then… _and then dream._

Goku took a long shaky breath. It wasn't a deep moral struggle. Goku didn't go for those kinds of things. It was just… one of those things he had to do. No questions asked, none answered…yet. His feet were getting cold on the wooden floor. _I'm doing this already._ With that, he stepped into the closet, closed the door behind him, made himself comfortable on a bucket and flicked open a lighter he had swiped who-knew-how-long-ago from Gojyo.

His fingers shaking a little, he yanked out the contents of the packet. He'd had some time to look over it before Sanzo had come back into their room after making all the travel arraignments with Hakkai. Goku had been listening for his footsteps and by the time the monk stepped into the room Goku was under the covers, facing the wall, the package stuffed securely under his mattress.

Goku fumbled through the papers awkwardly. Pages printed off websites about ancient lore. Leaflets scanned out of books about theories on how Heaven was run. Different myths on the War Prince Nataku. Someone had made a lot of effort, putting these things together. _But how does it all connect?_ Every time Goku read through something there would be a moment, a second really, in which he would feel a pull or a spasm of recognition. However, when he had tried to reread the sentences over which these de javus had happened…nothing. He drew a blank.

"Here we are," he whispered hoarsely, yanking out a few papers stapled together while trying to keep the rest from spilling off his lap. His eyes flickered to the lighter, careful to keep it far and away from Sanzo's scripture. His eyes yanked back to the papers he was holding. He had to drop them on top of the pile in his lap. Damn his shaking fingers!

_Enchantments of the Gods, Done and Undone_

These papers had been scanned out of a book – an old looking book. The scan was yellow, and the ink was faded, making it all the more difficult to read. But that was fine. Goku was a good reader. He had known how to read even when he had been in the cave. He had just walked into the temple with Sanzo and realized that hey, he could read that stuff on Sanzo's desk! Ha! Though Hakkai had taught him how to count, maybe now, he'd be able to learn who taught him how to read…

_That would be neat._

The first time Goku had looked over this bunch of papers he had immediately thought of Homura. A lot of the stuff here was about the sort of stuff Homura had been about. In fact, Goku would not have been surprised if Homura had gotten some of his motivation from this very text.

It was all about using the founding scriptures to do or undo the work of the gods. Here was a whole page about the theory of the earth's founding! And here it went on to say that, even without all of the scriptures a 'new world' – Homura all over again – could still be founded with a powerful enough source of energy like… the Great Sage.

Goku's eyes flickered back to the lighter, checking that his hand had not meandered to anything flammable. Back to the text.

The Great Sage was not only a creature that could be used in correlations _with_ the scriptures. He was made _from_ the scriptures for, if the Earth was his Mother then, in a sense, the scriptures were his grandparents.

_So Sanzo has been carrying my grandpa on his shoulders for years. Hell, he'd hate that idea._ Goku smirked nervously.

"The scriptures instill a natural order. When the Sage's power is not being used in unison with the scriptures for the creation of this 'second world,' each separate scripture has a unique effect on the Sage:

The Muten Scripture, sutra of Death, is the only known entity that can kill the Sage, who derives his power from the Earth and is powered by her immense strength.

The Uten Scripture, sutra of Life, is responsible for the flood of life within the Sage which, overflowed into two different personalities, one of whom committed heinous sins in Paradise.

The Koten Scripture, sutra of the Unkown and Infinite, guards over the Sages boundless strength and power, as it does over the power of the Earth itself, which moves and shakes the very core of life as we know it.

The Seiten Scripture, sutra of Sanctity, fuels the Sage's diadem, which acts as a limiter to his awesome strength and was crafted by the Gods. In no observations has this scripture directly influenced the Sage.

The Maten Scripture, sutra of Evil, is not only said to be the core of the Sages being, but is also something of a suppressor. Within the Sage are concealed, by order of the gods, the evil deeds which he committed, unknown to all, including himself so that he may never think to return to them.

Goku swallowed. Well, he could see why Homura's heart went out to him. His own heart went out to him too. What shithead had written this?

_Anyway,_ he thought, pulling his eyes away from the highfalutin insults. _I have what I need._ Awkwardly, crumpling the top page a little, he stuffed the wad of papers back into their envelope. He flicked out the light. Gingerly he slid the package and the lighter as far into a corner of the closet as he could without knocking against a mop. It wasn't very far.

In the dark, as carefully as he was able – he didn't want to tare the paper – he unrolled the Maten Scripture. _I suppose some idiot would say it was fate that Sanzo had to carry _this _scripture, _he thought, bending over and laying out on the floor. The edges curled up against the narrow walls of the closet.

He sat like that on his bucket for a while, leaning over, keeping his balance by holding onto the floor, fingers pressing into the paper of one of the founding scripture of Heaven and Earth. …_Now what?_

He was tempted to go back to that packet. Was there a magical spell he needed to mutter? Sanzo always chanted something when he activated the scripture. Damn it, he should have listened more carefully, shouldn't he! But hell, how was he supposed to know whatever it was Sanzo always muttered under his breath?! Half of his was insults and another quarter was old-man complaints! Goku began to get really nervous.

He swallowed hard. _Calm down. Just calm down._ And still he sat there. _What to do, what to do, what to do… _Had he thought it would just come to him while he sat on this bucket in some closet of a god forsaken inn that wasn't even in India!?

Well, that's exactly what it did. His eyes snapped open, and he grinned outright. Of course. How stupid he was! What was the one memory he had from before the cage? What was the one bridge he had into that life? What had been the one thing he had clung to day after day in that cave? He licked his dry lips and set his palms flat on the scripture. It crinkled under his grip. He hoped he wouldn't leave sweat marks on it.

"My name," he whispered into the dark, "is Goku."

For a moment nothing happened. Then an explosion of power rushed up Goku's arms and into his slight frame. It was as if a torrent of hurricanes had been injected into his system and were now bashing about inside him, willing to find a way out. He opened his mouth, his eyes, his ears, his pores. He opened everything that he could open. He needed to get them out! They were going to rip him apart!

He felt something slap him on the face. The Maten Scripture had extended into its greater form and was whipping about him and every place that it lashed out upon he felt a burn and to that place the hurricanes rushed and good god he felt like he was a boiling, bubbling concoction of pain!

Then, like any boiling bubbling concoction, he evaporated. Just like that. He felt cool, and light, and all he could see about him was… light. Was that the sun? He reached up a hand to feel for his diadem. It was still there. Good. Good… He smiled. Now… the sun… Light as could be, cool and open as air, he blacked out on the closet floor.

---

Sanzo jolted awake in his sleep. "What the-"

A surge of power, a surge that was much too familiar to be good, coursed through him. Yes, much too familiar. Indeed, it was too familiar to even be anyone_ else's _scripture. "Shit!" He yanked his bed side table drawer open. "Shit!" Panic flooded him.

He fumbled about him, disoriented in the dark, and then stopped. There wasn't a sound. That wasn't right. Goku, quiet as he had been in the days, could not control the sniffles and snores he emitted at night. Though Sanzo would never have admitted it, those sounds had been a comfort to him. They had reassured him that Goku was still there and still Goku. And they were gone. He was gone.

"Sanzo?!" Light blinded him and he threw up his arms as best he could against it. "What happened!? Is everything alright?!"

He lowered his arms and blinked at Hakkai and Gojyo's silhouettes. That Sanzo Party built in radar had activated again.

"Hey, where's the monkey?"

"And the scripture," Sanzo added darkly, getting up and pushing the drawer back into place. He was overreacting about Goku. He did that much too often. Goku would be fine. He _was_ nineteen after all. And besides, Sanzo hadn't heard his voice calling out to him, so he was probably just fine.

"The scripture?! You're kidding me!"

"Lets go," Sanzo pocketed his gun and took an extra carton of bullets, just in case. "The monkey can take care of himself. Right now we need to worry about the scripture. How the hell did anyone get in here without my noticing?!" His head was pounding. It was way too early in the morning for this. Or was it too late?

"Sanzo?" He blinked at Hakkai.

"Tell Hakuryu to fly over the city. I'm going to activate the scripture. If it's still in the vicinity, he'll see it." Something else was bothering him. He was the only one who could use the Maten Scripture. Then why had he felt its power just a moment ago?

"Hakuryu, if you would?" Hakkai asked the dragon sitting on his shoulder.

The dragon let out a 'cheep' of consent, and Gojyo opened the window for him. Out he flew. Again, despite the trauma of the moment a nettling, annoying voice in the back of his head asked Sanzo, _Where's the monkey?_

He took a deep steadying breath, and proceeded to chant.

For a moment there was nothing. Then the floorboards rattled violently.

"What the-?" Gojyo teetered.

"It's downstairs?"

Sanzo's eyes narrowed. Something was very, very wrong.

Curious eyes looked out at them from doors as they ran down the hall. "Oy, keep it down, will ya?!" echoed from one of the room. Down the stairs, into the common room, and… Sanzo turned around slowly. Everything that had been rushing by much too quickly, stopped.

"Sanzo?" He pushed past Gojyo, staring.

_No._ "Hakkai, stoke up that fire," he rasped. There was a shuffling, a crackle, and a blaze as the fire roared to life with a new log and a handful of kindling. _No._ There, under the staircase, the door thrown open by the force of the scripture, were the two of Sanzo's belongings that had gone missing that night. "No…"

Years ago Sanzo had walked into his office to find Goku tangled up in the Maten scripture. Hands, legs, and creator of the World as we know it, all in one awful mess. After recovering from his semi-heart attack, Sanzo had whacked Goku with his fan to within an inch of the monkey's life. "Bu- but it smells nice! It smells like you!" a teary eyed Goku had sniffled up at him in his defense. The fan had stilled in mid swing. Idiot.

He was now face down on the floor, having slumped off the bucket he had been sitting on, which had itself keeled over. He wasn't 'tangled up' in the scripture now. There was not enough of it, or perhaps too much of him, for it to be a tangle. It was wrapped around his neck like a scarf that had billowed in the wind. He did not move when Gojyo sat him upright. He did not say anything when Sanzo carefully pulled the scripture off of him. He was breathing regularly, and for all the world, he looked asleep.

But Goku wasn't asleep. Sanzo knew he wasn't. _Why didn't he call out to me? I would have come. I always came before. Why? _A hollow thought echoed in Sanzo's now utterly vacant mind as he pulled his ward from Gojyo's hold and slowly carried the scrawny limp body upstairs.

_Maybe he didn't want me to come. _


	4. Talking Back

**Chapter 4**

**Talking Back**

Goku stood alone in a long hallway. The last thing he could remember was…light. And just when he had thought he had caught it…he had blinked, only to find himself here. _Weird._ It was a very fancy hallway. It was trimmed with some kind of brick red and there were columns. The whole thing was just very… perfect.

He took one step and a thousand echoes came off of it. This is just too weird. Why wasn't he back with Sanzo? Granted, he had said that it would be okay if something happened to him, but that was different from something…_actually_ happening to him. Step. Echo. Echo. Echo. Step. Echo… It was a brightly lit hallway, and he was happy for that. He wouldn't have been comfortable here if it was dark. Not that he was comfortable anyway, but still. Gojyo would have made fun of his 'scared of the dark' attitude. Hakkai would have mothered him, which was just as bad. And Sanzo…well, he knew about it.

_A window?_ Sure enough, he had come to a large window with the same color red-brick frame as the rest of the hall. Looking out of it he saw a grove of trees. They had pink leaves. That was nice… They looked pretty. Slowly he pushed the window open. The breeze came in. Good, so wherever he was, at least he knew he wasn't dead. He could still _feel._ Then came the sent. Goku closed his eyes for a moment, smiling. This was another thing he could never tell the gang. Gojyo would probably have laughed him out of town if he knew just how much Goku liked flowers. Hakkai might actually have been alright with it. And Sanzo…already knew about it. How many times had Goku raided the temple's flowerpots to decorate Sanzo's desk? _Stupid kid,_ Goku thought wistfully as he opened his eyes again, still smirking.

"YOU THERE! GET YOUR DIRTY HANDS OFF THE WINDOW! YOU'LL LEAVE FINGER PRINTS!"

If Goku was an old man like Pervy-Water-Sprit-Gojyo, he_ might_ just have had a heart attack then. As it was, he leapt fifteen feet back from the window, which landed him in the opposite wall of the hallway.

He turned around to see whom the voice had belonged to and there, some twenty feet away from him, was a man in a robe as fancy as the hallway, his hair tied back in a bun and_…He's got a chakra on his forehead._

"What are you gawking at you unclean runt?!"

Goku swallowed. The way that guy was looking at him was the same way the monks at the temple had looked at him. He had not been back at the temple for over a year and had forgotten just how nerve-racking it was to have someone stare down at him with utter disgust. In the last year whenever he _had_ run into anyone who truly hated him it had been someone who had hated the entire Sanzo Party.

Goku blinked. _Scared to walk down a dark hall by myself. Scared by some old fart of a bully. Since when am still thirteen?_ So he did something he had never had the guts to do back when he was fresh out of the cave. He talked back.

"What do ya _think,_ Fart Face?" He sneered, alliterating his insult just for good measure.

The monk-like asshole went livid. _That felt so good to say. And now he's coming at me. _Goku would have backed up from the man now stalking down the hall toward him if there had been anywhere to back up to. Also, he did not really feel remotely threatened by this bastard. So, he settled for leaning nonchalantly on the wall – against which he was backed up.

"You are coming with me! We will see how your guardian deals with your foul mouth!" and with that he grabbed Goku back the elbow and began to steer him down the hall. "Honestly, as have no idea what the Merciful Goddess was thinking, keeping you up here," he muttered heatedly.

Goku's first reaction was to just kick his booty into next week. However, he rethought himself rather quickly. He did not know where he was. He did not know how he had gotten here. At least this way things were progressing in some direction or other. If he didn't like how things went from here he would just threaten this tight-ass Goddess-guardian into submission and go from there. In fact, that was probably what he was going to have to do, given the way this jerk was describing how he, Goku, would be 'dealt with.'

"Excuse me!"

Goku was knocked from his planning by the Monk-Like-Jerk's hammering on a door and crying out "Excuse me!" in steadily rising volumes. "Tish," he finally said, his voice satisfyingly hoarse, "…must be at the Marshal's. Follow me."

_Now_ Goku faltered a little. Marshal? A bitchy goddess was one thing. A godly Marshal was another. He would have to fight in that case. Could he even summon his weapon in this place? It was not that Goku doubted that he could kick the marshal's ass under normal circumstances (or as normal as they could get when fighting a god). After all, he had defeated the War Prince himself once. It was just that he wasn't sure if he was stupid enough to walk into trouble_ that_ easily.

He mulled over it for about half a second as he was dragged down yet another hall. Then he smirked. _I'll just have to risk it._ Yes, he was that stupid after all.

Again they were in front of a door and again Monk-Like-Jerk was knocking.

"Yes, who is it?" Goku, who had been looking around this latest generic red-brick hall, snapped to attention. _What the… _

"Marshal, I apologies for the intrusion but I have a disciplinary case which I must report to Konzen Douji."

_I _know _that name. I _so_ know that name. Wait…_

The jerk's next words, however, completely pulled Goku from this latest trail of thought. His ears picked up a sigh and then, "Alright. My dear general, clear out a space will you."

He knew he should have run when he had the chance. A marshal _and_ a general?! The Monk-Like-Jerk must have been referring to the general when he had said 'Konzen Douji.' _Joy._ And to top it all, Goku was hungry. He and his brilliant ideas-

"Alright brat, in you go!" With one unconvincing shove Goku allowed himself to be pushed into the room. There was nothing for it; he was just going to have to jump into action from the get-go.

"Nyoi-Bo!" He could smell One, Two, Three people in the room. Having the sharpest sences of the four members of the Sanzo Party had its great perks, so long as he stayed clear of Gojyo's dirty laundry. One person smelled of liquor, another of ink, and both of cigeretts. _The martial and the general Konzen Douji._ The third however – _inks, laundry detergent and flowers. A girl. The goddess._

An idea popped into his head which Hakkai would not have apooved of. But, then again, Hakkai would probably not have apooved of his brilliant stratagy of getting pushed into a room with two army-related gods either. This idea was the most cliché idea that Goku himself had ever encounterd, given that he had encounted time and time again it in battle. He would have kicked himself now for thinking it if he did not suddenly empithyse with how desperate other exhicuters of said idea must have been.

The idea was: A hostage. _How really, really lame._ Still, nothing for it.

With one spin he was behind the flower-sented goddess. _Yup, it's a girl alright. Long blond ponytale 'n dress 'n all._ He clamped an arm around her and broght the two of them right together. _Hakkai would so not aproove of this._ Then with his other arm he brought the Nyoi-Bo up against her thoat. It was a good thing she was only about half a head taller than he was.

"Anyone who wants to screw with this 'unclean runt?' is going to have to go through Girly here first!" _Fear me! I am oh-so very, very LAME!_

There was utter silence in the room. Goku, who had pulled the girl down a little so that she would be his hight, now looked over her shoulder at the marshal and the general. His mouth slowly opened. He had _not _been imagining the similaraties between the voice of the martial and the voice of Hakkai. Or if he had, then he was now imagining the faceial similaraties too. There stood a man in a white lab coat, a sword drawn, and looking the spitting-image of how Hakkai had looked when he had been Gouno, his hair down to his shoulders.

Goku swollowed, his eyes trailing to a man that looked just the way Gojyo had looked after cutting his hair some three years ago – albite, a grayscaled Gojyo.

_Then __maybe…_ Slowly, dreadingly, Goku's eyes slided to the face of the 'girl' just inches from his own. He realized, a little late, that his guardian and the goddess were _not _one and the same. He swollowed again.

---

**This is a very short chapter, but I thought that merging it with another would make it less powerful (if powerful is the right word). Please tell me if Goku's confusion does not make sense. (That sounded odd as well, but I mean it as I say it.)**


	5. The Power of a Name in Absolute Silence

**Chapter Five**

**The Power of a Name**

**in the Absolute Silence**

Hakkai pushed his door open, glad of the light which met him upon entering his and Gojyo's room. It was a local inn, and not very wealthy. Lights went out in the hallways after ten o'clock. How did Hakkai know this? Because the Sanzo Party had been staying at the same inn for three nights in a row.

"Any luck?"

Hakkai shook his head. "I brought him up the new meal, but he hadn't even touched the old one. I'll have to apologies to the cook. After all, he's hardly eaten anything for these last few days."

"Lilly-handed spoiled bastard," Gojyo spat, glaring holes into the ceiling as he lay on his bed.

"…I take it you don't have a wink of sleep in you either?"

"Ha. You're kidding me right? …So what was his holiness doing, apart from catching up on his last half a year of penitent fasting?"

Hakkai shrugged, walking across the room and sitting down on his own bed. He was stiff in his right shoulder. Must have been the stress. He tried to rub out the knot. "On one bed you have Goku, peacefully asleep. On the other you have Sanzo, sitting up, meditating, and glaring holes into his pupil." Everything they said was said in low tones. It was as if… as if they were not the ones who were allowed to start a racket. _That_ member of the Sanzo Party… he was gone.

"…Throw me a smoke."

Hakkai leaned over to the drawer next to his bed, swiped off the pack of cigarettes, and tossed it across the room. Even the sound of hand catching package was somehow quieter than usual, rather than being louder in this silence. There was a gentle 'click' as Gojyo flipped his lighter open, and Hakkai vaguely wondered if it was the same lighter they had found in the closet with Goku.

Hakkai thought back to Goku and what he had said about how he, Hakkai, had only lost his name after committing heinous sins, whereas Goku had lost his very identity. The question was…

"A penny for your thoughts," Gojyo exhaled a stream of smoke.

"…I'm wondering at the logic behind erasing Goku's memory in the first place." Gojyo turned his head to look away from the ceiling and to Hakkai. Hakkai could rather sense than see one crimson eyebrow arching in question. "You see, let us say that the memories that Goku had were good memories – why erase them? Surly any good memories he had would have served as a greater tormentor for him when he was in the cave. So then, they could have been bad memories – in which case they were taken from him for his own protection, as much as for the protection of the gods. But then, bad memories are a tormenter, but they're very virtue of being…bad. So why erase _them?"_

Gojyo brought the cigarette to his lips again, his eyes fixed on Hakkai. "…Sounds twisted…"

"Hm."

---

Again the whispers faded to silence. Gojyo hated it. He was so going to kill the monkey when he got his hands on him. He just needed for Goku to return to a state where he could appreciate the punishment…

…How long were they going to stay here? Well, that was easy: until Sanzo decided to move. The question was what was the bastard thinking? Gojyo had once heard Sanzo say that he 'didn't take any extra baggage.' Did Goku now count as extra baggage? In all sincerity Gojyo could no more imagine Sanzo leaving Goku behind then he could have imagined Goku leaving Sanzo behind.

_But then, isn't that exactly what he did?_ And they couldn't exactly just travel with Sleeping Beauty's younger brother. He would be too easy a target for demon attacks. Suddenly, what with all this brooding, Gojyo was seeing how Sanzo had lost his appetite.

There was an impatient knock on their door. Gojyo looked up from his bed and exchanged a glance with Hakkai. Could it be Sanzo? Given what he had been thinking about him just them, the entrance of the monk would be too cliché. But then, Sanzo seemed as prone to cliché entrances and Kougaiji was to arriving on the scene from high places. He had noticed the former; Goku the later.

Another knock, and another, and then, "Oh for crying out loud boys! Get up, get decent, and rally in your leader's room! Come on. I expect you in five, so haul your little bootees for the first time in three bloody days!" The voice that came at a shout through the door left a more complete silence than ever. Then, like racehorses out of the gate, he and Hakkai bolted into action.

_What…the hell?_

Gojyo knew that voice. It, the voice, was female. Its owner was slightly less so. Slightly. He heaved himself off his bed, scrambled across the room on two feet and one arm, the other occupied with his cigarette, yanked at the belt he had discarded on the back of a chair, and was out of the room a hair's breathe behind Hakkai. The hallway was already deserted, but that famed radar had gone off in his head again only moments before two gunshots were heard from Sanzo's room. _So the bastard _is _alive. _

---

Oh he was no in the mood for this bitch or her walrus mustached flunky.

His gun cocked, his every nerve on fire, his head light from lack of sleep, his stomach empty and his boy breathing regularly and unresponsively on the bed across from him, he was not in the mood for this freakin-

"Hello to you too, darling," said the old hag, uttering the first words he had heard clearly in days.

"Announcing," the old man said wearily, as he wanted to be there as little as Sanzo wanted him to be there, "The Merciful Goddess, one of five-"

And in crashed the backup. It took all of his self restraint not to shoot them for good measure. After all, he might need the bullets for the It in front of him. 'It' was none other than the goddess responsible for sending him on this thrice accused journey with these thrice accuses three idiots: the Merciful Goddess who, to top all, had also sexually harassed him on more than one occasion.

Two more shots went off, because he felt like it. The walrus spazzed. _One left._

Even with the gunshots the silence that followed was only the more absolute. Without a word, Hakkai closed the door behind him, and they were enclosed by the four walls.

"What. Do. You. Want?"

"For. You. To. Move. Your. Asses," she answered, mimicking his voice, so very strained on the leash that was 'self restraint.'

And there went the last shot. She yawned, a bored expression on her face. Her lackey, however, looked ready to wet himself. "Let me remind you that you boys are on a mission. I don't pay you to sit around and angst in your rooms."

"I'll move when I feel like it."

"Really? Well, there's this funny thing called the police. They come and deal with reprobates, which is exactly what you'll be when you hand the inn keeper an expired credit card." She smirked. "Got me?" Then she looked over her shoulder at Hakkai and Gojyo. "Oh, come on. Get in front of me with your friend so that I can see you all. Go on, move!"

Gojyo looked about to protest, but Hakkai just grabbed him by the upper arm and steered him around the divine pair to stand next to Sanzo. He, it seemed, had taken the credit card threat seriously.

Sanzo, however, was beyond caring. Here she came, so high and mighty and damn full of herself! He had been utterly neutral to the idea of gods when he was a boy at his Master Koumyou's temple. What use were the gods? It was his master who had saved him and brought him up. It was his master that held his utter devotion. No gods.

His opinion had not changed when he met the Three Aspects. Indeed, even he was in sight awe of these three being which connected the lower and upper word. That awe faded however, and by the time he released Goku from his cage and heard how they spoke of his being 'a great and terrible being' he pretty much knew they were as full of it as any mortals. And that was just a few months after meeting them.

It was only when he began to come into contact with _true_ gods that he began to bread a sincere dislike for them. First it had been merely 'the direct order of the Merciful Goddess' that he take Goku, Hakkai and Gojyo on the longest guy road trip in history. That had pissed him off royally, but because Goku and Gojyo were closer to him than any aloof goddess, he had vented on _them_ via gun and paper fan.

Then, after waking up from a comatose state after a near death experience with one of the only friends he had had in his past, Gojyo had informed him that The Hermaphrodite on High had come down and frenched him… but that was only after frenching Gojyo, so technically they had shared an indirect kiss. Whoopy.

…It was best not to even delve into the traumatic mental scaring _that _package of information had left him with.

At that point Sanzo had decided that he hated gods about as much as he hated everyone else and never mind being one of their five representatives on Earth. This was before he had woken up with The Hermaphrodite on High straddling him and cupping his chin in her (or its) hand. And around the same time as that he met the War Prince Homura, who then proceeded to try and take away his Maten Scripture _and _Goku.

No, Sanzo held no friendship toward the gods, and it did not help that the Merciful Goddess had, between sexual innuendos, informed him that he and his companions were something of a form of entertainment to her. Now there was probably only one thing Sanzo hated more than being a pawn in some twisted celestial game, and that was being a pawn in some twisted celestial game, unable to get his monkey into the clear.

He blinked, and a blinding flash of the obvious struck him.

_So…let's presume that I am the pawn, and that she moves the pieces on the chess board. In that case…_ His grip tightened on his gun and he snapped it open to reload it. _…in that case she can cut through the bullshit I've been wading in for the last three nights. _One, two, three, four, five bullets. _Provided she's willing to fork over the information…_ Well, he'd just have to shoot it out of her if she wasn't. He'd rage, kill and mutilate, but he was going to get to the bottom of this.

He cocked his gun and aimed. "Start talking." Again that maddening silence filled the room. The only sound now was Goku's steady breathing.

She smiled at the three men in front of her. It was not the smile she had been giving him a moment ago. There was none of the sarcastic seduction about it. The look she was giving Sanzo now was almost…motherly.

She walked over to Goku's bed and, despite Sanzo's tensioning, sat down at the end of it. She leaned back comfortably. "Once upon a time there was a man. He had long golden hair which he kept tied back in a ponytail, and he wore pearly white robes. One day, a very long time ago, he took in a dirty urchin of a boy. A lot of jazz happened, but in the end he died trying to save him."

The momentary anticipation that had risen in Sanzo at the prospect of getting some answers deflated in the most dissatisfying, bitter way. "What is this?" he hissed. "I don't need you repeating my life story, thank you very much."

"Oh, but it isn't your life story." That cynical smirk was back on her face now. "It's Goku's."

"…" He had never hated silence so much as he did now. Never.

"I said 'a long time ago.' This all took place long before you or Koumyou Sanzo were born. It's ancient history." She shrugged, looking at the sleeping boy. "The only one who would care about it now would be Goku."

"But I thought," Sanzo jumped at Hakkai's voice, "that Goku didn't have any memories of his past, and he never mentioned a man to us." It was satisfying, having Hakkai's cool reasoning at his back when his own mind was somehow going into reverse. It was at times like this that the three idiots came in useful. Of course, their use was canceled out by the fact that Hakkai's good reasoning was only in response to a problem created by Goku. _Damn monkey. _

And there was that smirk again. Sanzo really hated this hag. "He doesn't need to. He's carried the token of that man all his life."

Sanzo actually swallowed as she looked at him now. "Didn't you wonder how your scripture activated without your chanting the sutra? It was his name – the only thing he remembered from before the cave. The only thing that connected him to his past… until now."

Something inside of Sanzo cracked. Silently. It couldn't have been his sanity: that had gone long ago. He had never questioned where Goku had gotten his name. Hell, the fact that he could remember that much was good enough. Why ask questions? Sanzo had never even considered that at some point, at some time… someone had named him. There was power in a name. A name shaped a person. His own name was proof of that. As a child: Kouryuu, the river orphan. Being called by that name had made him sullen and resilient to the bullies of this world. It had taught him before his time to be guarded against everyone. Then his second name: Genjyo Sanzo. Everything he was now was due to the fact that he had inherited that name and tired to live up to it. His very existence revolved around his name. Everyone's did. Everyone had a last name and a feud attached to it. That was why Hakkai had his changed – so that he might start his life afresh.

Sanzo had always thought himself as Goku's keeper, teacher even (and in the deepest confines of his mind, father). He had felt that, for better or worse, Goku had been molded by his example. Now, however, entered another figure. This had been the unnamed foe that he had shamefully feared. This had been the reason he had refused to help Goku in his quest for the past. Now he knew for certain that somewhere, buried in five hundred years of history and in a boy's lost memories, was a man who had given his ward the same 'Son Goku.'

Shakily, he lowered his arm. He had not said anything for minutes now. "I thought," his voice did not sound like his own, but he did not stop talking. He could not let them know that he was shaken. He was _not_ shaken. "…that you were all about our 'going West.' Why send the chimp running down memory lane now?"

Another deafening silence, with only Goku's oblivious breathing to make it the more quiet. "…I didn't."

"He said he met a dame that gave him the package-o-wonder." _That's right… Gojyo's still in the room,_ Sanzo thought vaguely.

"Not one of ours I'm afraid," the Goddess responded, getting up from the bed and straitening her dress.

"Then whose?"

"Can't say. I'm just here to get you boys going." He. Hated. Her. Smile.

"…then tell us then where Goku is right now." _Hakkai._

"Him? He's in his own mind. Oh don't worry, he's perfectly healthy. It isn't your normal comatose state. He can stay like this for quite a while as long as you feed him. And the up side is you don't have to catch all the fish in the ocean as you do when he's awake." She motioned to her lackey. "Just keep heading west, will you? You're not going to resolve anything by staying around this dump: universal or local. And _do_ remember what I said about the credit card-"

"-What was his name?"

She was already turning to leave when he forced that question out of his mouth. He hated that he cared, but he needed to know.

She looked back. "Whose?"

"His guardian's."

"Oh." On slid that foul smirk. "Konzen. Konzen Douji." The smirk wavered, and again became that eerie motherly smile. "He was my nephew."

_I don't give a Fuck!_ Sanzo fired off five rounds then, and all of them embedded in the back wall. She and her walrus were gone and Sanzo was left in rage. He knew that name. And he knew that Hakkai and Gojyo would know it too. It was the name Homura had always called him by. It was the name he had been dreading to hear.

Suddenly he hated Homura a thousand times more than he had before. So… so they had all been laughing at him? He wasn't worthy of being called 'Sanzo.' Why? Because he didn't stand alone as 'Sanzo.' He was just… just a second 'Konzen,' whoever the fuck that was! He was just the replacement for Goku's original guardian!

Homura…Zenon…Shien…the old hag… They all looked at him as merely a replacement figure! He wasn't even a pawn. He was the bit of wood they picked out and put on the chess board after the pawn had rolled between the floorboards and couldn't be reached anymore. _What. The. Fuck!_

He swallowed hard. _And…_His eyes slid across from the blank spot where the goddess had stood to where Goku lay on his cot… _And what about you? Eh? Subconsciously? How often did you clutch onto me because somewhere in the back of your mind I was your link to your old master? How many of those stupid hugs were really for him?!_ It hurt to think. Yet to not think meant to listen to this infernal silence!

"…Sanzo?"

He blinked. Right, the two morons were still here. "Out," he barked.

"Listen man-"

"Out! We leave in the morning," he rasped. He kept his head turned away from the door as Hakkai and Gojyo brushed past him. His eyes were fixed only on the boy lying on his bed.

The door clicked shut. Silence. Farther down the hall another door clicked shut.

"…You bastard," he hissed. "You selfish, fucking bastard." His only answer was steady breathing in the silence.

---

"Dr. Nii."

"Hum?" he wheeled around in his swivel chair to be greeted by a pair of pretty green eyes.

"Why hello my little dear~"

"My mission is accomplished."

"I know," he smiled rakishly at her through the darkness, the boredom never lifting from his eyes.

"…" Of course they never answered to that question. After all, how could he have all the answers? _How indeed._

He took a long drag from his cigarette and reached across his desk. "Here you go," he said, sliding and envelope forward and into the light of his computer screen. "Here's your reward as promised."

There was a brief, delicious, silence. Then she walked across the room, reached out a hand, and took up the envelope.

"Whoops, looky there~" He caught her by her outstretched wrist and looked her into his face. "You've got a smear mark here." Smirking, he licked his thumb and trailed it in circles over a spot on her forehead. "There you go," he whispered silkily. Her face looked sickly in the light of his computer screen. It made her eyes shine a little less brightly. _How nice._ He trailed a hand under her chin and brought her face down against his. Again he smirked as he let her slip back though his fingers.

"Careful now with that package~" he hummed as she half walked, half staggered from the room. "You need to be weary of how you use the stuff inside." He slipped his cigarette once more between his lips and drew a breath.

His eyes slid across to his old, dusty chess set. Kougaiji had been the knight. But now… a change in casting was required. Nii reached across and plucked up a back pawn. He weighed it momentarily in his hand, then threw it into the surrounded darkness. It banged and clattered against a few pipes, but then went still, lost forever in the enormous lab of Houtou Castle.

He spun in his swivel chair, his arms held above him languidly like a conductors not yet conducting. He looked about at the table directly behind him, reached out, took up a test tube, and uncorked it. Idly he rolled the test tube back across the table and it tinkled on its way into oblivion. The cork, however, he set down squarely on the chess set. The test tube bumped against something and stopped rolling, and the silence was absolute.

---

**And here's another chapter right after the previous one! Anyone who doesn't know what I'm talking about when I mention the scene where the Merciful Goddess straddles Sanzo: watch episode 29 of Gensomaden Saiyuki. **

**Please tell me if this explains the previous chapter. I realize it was a bit confusing. Even more shall be explained in the **_**next **_**chapter, in greater detail, to Goku. **


	6. Your Name, My Mantra

**Chapter Six**

**Your Name, My Mantra**

It was a stray thought which he did not even registered in the moment. That light which he had first reached out to in that closet, and which had taken him from the inn…_I finally caught it._

"Holy shit." Goku let go of his 'hostage' and stumbled back a pace. "You're… you're a _guy!_ You're _that _guy. The guy from-"

There was a gunshot that rent through the air then. Goku cracked his neck and he snapped his head to the side, _willing_ it to be Sanzo… the right Sanzo. It wasn't. The black haired Gojyo had pulled out a dueling riffle and the bullet had just missed his ear.

"Alright, just back away from him nice and easy." Their eyes met. It was the weirdest thing in the world: seeing Gojyo without his crimson eyes. Gojyo was defined by his being a half-breed and here, seeing a full-bred-god of a Gojyo was…weird.

Apparently he wasn't the only one that found something about the eyes weird. The gun lowered a fraction. "What the- gold…_Goku?"_ There was another pointed silence, in which Goku began to feel sincerely scared. The grayscaled Gojyo knew his name He knew his name! He…was cracking up.

Sure enough, The Gojyo's lips twitched- twitched again and then, like a badly made folding chair, he snapped in half and a howl of laughter racked him up and down and down again. "HE THOUGHT YOU WERE A GIRL! HA! HE THOUGHT, OH JEEZ, HE THOUGHT YOU WERE A GIRL! MOUTH OF THE GOD DAMN _BABE!!!" _Before Goku could do anything, before he could so much a step back, The Gojyo was at his side and leaning an arm on his shoulder. _"MAN!"_ he yelled, practically taking out an eardrum. _"Look_ at him! He's so _tall!"_ Goku felt his head being forced down as a heavy hand came to rest on his head and then rose steadily the one foot difference to the top of The Gojyo's head.

"Easy General, you're gonna scare him." Despite his words The Hakkai didn't seem in any hurry to pull The Gojyo off of him. He just walked a little closer, sheathing his sword, there upon folding his arms, and smiling a very motherly-slash-Hakkai expression on his face.

Goku was a clingy person and he knew it. Five hundred years without companionship of any sort did that. But right now he was a little overwhelmed and more than a little in need of breathing space. Everything was happening just too quickly, and he didn't even know _what _was happening! There was this Gojyo-like guy who was acting way too much like the Gojyo he shared the back seat with! And there was this Hakkai-like guy, guilty of the same crime. And there between them… Goku forced his head up to look at the guy who smelled like flowers and ink and parchment. Everything slowed down and for a moment Goku actually felt alright there with these weirdoes. He was just as gorgeous as Sanzo, but his face was a little softer, and more than ever Goku could see how shinny and bright his hair was. …His hair…

It was only when Goku was running the tip of the ponytail through his nervous fingers, thumb to digest twitching with their usual tick, that he realized he'd reached for it at all. He then reflection back to that first stray thought. _The light…the sun… "…Sun…"_ In a horror he felt that last word scratch its way up his throat and out of his mouth. _Idiot!_ "-that guy," he hurried said, trying to finish his previous statement. His eyes met a pair of all too familiar molten orbs of violet lava. The shock nearly made him pull out some of the poor man's hair, but he didn't. He didn't want to repeat that mistake again. _…Again?_ "You're that guy I saw in my dreams."

He felt the weight from his shoulder left. "…Shit." The Gojyo was now peering into his face. Too close, man. Too close. "You really...don't remember us?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw The Hakkai sigh. "I did suspect as much, given the state of your mind. I suppose we should start of with explanation?"

Goku heard a voice coming out of his own mouth. "That'd be nice." He could still feel those strands of hair between his fingers.

"I'll put the kettle on?"

"Dude, do you even know where it is?"

"…"

"Exactly. I'll come help."

And then he was alone with the man with golden hair and violet eyes. Now he could see what The Hakkai had meant by telling The Gojyo to 'clear out a space.' It was like they were in a little oasis of free floor, surrounded by a desert of haphazardly thrown books (through which The Hakkai and The Gojyo had waded to locate The Kettle).

Feeling awkward as could be, Goku let go of the man's hair a last. Hell, he couldn't help it! It was cool! …And Sanzo would have killed him for that thought.

"I suppose I ought to introduce myself." The poor guy in front of him looked just as put off as he was. "My name is Konzen Douji."

"S'nice to meet ya," Goku did his best to smile. How on Earth did Hakkai manage it so well? Scratch that. Hakkai's smiles were never done well. They were just really creepy. "My name's Goku."

"Ya, I know," Konzen said, giving off something that looked halfway between an awkward smile and a constipated look of pain. Now _that _looked weird on Sanzo's face. "I, em, gave it to you."

---

_If you meet the Buddah, kill the Buddah._

_If you meet your father, kill your father._

_Free of everything you are bound by nothing._

_Live the life that is given to you._

He had held to that belief for years. With the death of his master and his own inauguration as a Sanzo, that verse of wisdom had engrained itself into his soul. Over the years it had been tested. Not by any great temptations or epic moral decisions, no. He had gotten over any qualms about killing those who got in his way. No… It had been tested by a little runt of a monkey he had found in a cave when he was seventeen.

But, in the end, he realized that even the wisdom he had been living with was, itself, holding him down. As that very same monkey had once said, "We have our own way of doing things." And so they did. And so Sanzo came to terms with the irksome feelings he had developed for the monkey and the two other idiots with whom he had to waist his life, and said no more about it.

Sanzo loaded his gun slowly, deliberating over every movement. Perhaps this way he could fool himself into thinking that his hands were not even tempted to shake.

_Master…He gave me something that day, something that I wanted to protect…and when it was taken from me I learned how small I was. I vowed to never again care for someone so much. …I couldn't bear to lose them. _

That had been his mindset when they had all set out on this little road trip. Indeed, if anything, the Three Aspects had only made him more wary of making any attachments to these three reprobates. They had told him that on this journey he might come to _see with the eyes of his heart. _That had been all the warning he had needed to beat the two idiots in the backseat with a particularly vicious hand.

_That day, when you struck at me, Shuei, my dear old friend, it wasn't Goku I was trying to protect. It was another wound…that has yet to heal… Willing to die for no one…living for no one except myself…vowing to never again care for someone so much I couldn't bare to lose them…This…is my mantra. _

He nestled the gun within his robes.

_So when I protected Goku from Shuei's staff… and every time that I have stuck my neck out for one of those bastards since then… it has been to protect my mantra. If they were to die I might have to deal with the shit that came after it. I live only for myself, and I watch out for them because the idea of feeling small again… weak… It was insufferable._

_I once overheard Hakkai telling Goku that the most he could do was become strong… and not die. Well, that more or less summed it up. _

_Live and don't die, so that no one else need get hurt when you do. Live for yourself and protect no one because there is nothing as painful as watching someone you care for die…protecting you, and being left behind. So live, and by doing that, protect those around you. But live for no one except yourself…_

…_so that, by doing so, you might protect everyone. _

Sanzo slipped the Maten Scripture around his shoulders, and turned to the monkey who lay still as Death on his bed. Here was another who had left him behind. Sanzo had felt hatred at Koumyou Sanzo's death. However, the hatred had been directed at himself. Now, however, the hatred was directed at Goku.

Hadn't the monkey promised not to die before Sanzo did?

_And was I really stupid enough to find some warped, morbid comfort in that? Some stupid, pathetic, childish, vomit-worthy comfort of being 'taken care of?'_

He was almost too revolted to even touch the little shit. Gritting his teeth, Sanzo took hold of the brat as he had done on many previous occasions. There had been times, back in the monetary, when Goku had gotten so exhausted after a day of running, laughing, crying, eating and wholly _living_ for the first time in centuries, that he would fall asleep right underneath Sanzo's desk, under the man's feet. On those occasions Sanzo had had no choice but to carry the little pest back to his own bed. Such occasions had also proved to be useful in making sure that the monkey had enough warm blankets, and that the novices hadn't messed with his clothes or few personal belongings. Goku had always been very annoying in that sense. He could bother Sanzo from dawn to dusk (and sometimes through the night) about food and other trivia, but he could never rat out on someone else.

The memory gave an extra burst of anger to the monk, and he heaved the overgrown ape over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. With that he stalked over to the door and slammed it shut behind him as he went out of the room, almost hoping that he could leave the foul memory of his unwelcome guests and misgivings within its musty, dingy and thoroughly inhospitable walls.

---

**I hope Sanzo's thought process makes sense. This is what I always thought was beneath all of the 'I live for myself and don't give a poo about anyone' attitude. Did it come off well? Sanzo-esqu? I'm not started a debate here, so you do not need to tell me whether or not you agree with my 'what is at the bottom of Sanzo's mantra-talk' theory. I just want to know if it makes sense on a literary level, and if I capture Sanzo's voice well. No debates. It's a fan-fiction. I hope you enjoy. **

**Short chapters be short!**

**And the explanation for current Goku's situation is coming in the next chapter! Sorry about that. ^^;**


	7. Engraved in Time

**I'd like to dedicate this chapter to Titangirl1161, who's given me extraordinary boosts of confidence with her wonderful reviews on all of my chapters, and who is the author of the fan-fiction "Lost Lives."**

**---**

**Chapter Seven**

**Engraved in Time**

"Hey, Hakkai." Gojyo looked out at the mundane scenery outside the window. It was the drugstore across the street. From here he could see a grey little wretch of a cat pawing at a discarded bag of potato chips. _Do cats even eat potato chips? _

"Hm? You ready?"

"Ya, just getting in my morning smoke." Hell, Hakkai didn't need to tell him. He knew that they weren't going to have breakfast. _Oh, how the monkey would have complained._ He coughed from the smoke. He hadn't done _that_ for a while. "…Hakkai?"

"_What?"_ It was sharper than usual.

Gojyo blew the thin stream of smoke out of the window before continuing. "That goddess chick said that the state Goku was in wasn't bad for him, ya?"

"…Yes. I suppose that is some small reassurance."

Gojyo smirked. "Is it?" He crushed his cigarette along the window frame and turned back to Hakkai, even thought he knew the damn fear was probably shining bright as day from his eyes. "If it's okay for him to stay there, what if he doesn't want to come back?"

---

"…"

Silently he and Gojyo made their way down the hall and down the stairs. Without a word they went outside and clambered into Jeep. They waited for Sanzo and when he came out Hakkai only vaguely wondered what the management must have thought when he had appeared before them with Goku tossed over his shoulder.

Unceremoniously – indeed, almost brutally – he tossed Goku into the back seat and Gojyo let out something of a muffled yelp when the heap landed on top of him. Sanzo took no notice. In those three days that Sanzo had kept to his and Goku's room Hakkai had thought that, when they did set out again, Sanzo would want to sit in the back with Goku. He had even begun devising several different ways to discreetly change the seating arraignment without embarrassing the monk. It had been a way to pass the monotony. But Sanzo now took his usual seat next to Hakkai in the front.

All this was done without a single word. They left the town in the cool morning, just before dawn. It was going to be a very long day.

---

"Merciful Goddess?"

"Hm?" She was sitting with her legs in the water, gently disturbing her pond's surface. There was nothing to see right now anyway, except for a group of brooding men among whom was the distraught reincarnation of her nephew.

No…there was nothing to see down there right now. The real show was in a place she couldn't reach. She turned in on her rump a little and looked back at the elegant thrown that had been shoved back against one of her walls – out of the way, just like the little violet haired boy who sat in a comatose state atop it. Just as he had been sitting for the last five hundred years. "… Isn't it curious, Jiroushin? Nataku ran a sword through his own body to get away from Goku. It was the only way the little idiot could think of to avoid the order his father had given him to kill his best friend." She kicked her feet about the water idly, looking across to those ever open, ever vacant, golden eyes. She smiled a little. "…You know… I'm beginning to think that no one can bear to keep away from that little monkey for more than half a millennia…"

"…Are you…alright?"

She clucked her tongue in irritation. She hated making Jiroushin worry. However, it wasn't as if she could help it. He knew her too well. He was the only one in the heavens, but he knew her much too well. "I was just thinking… about something I said a while back," she smiled, running her fingers along the petal of a lily floating in the water, "when I erased that boy's memory…"

She closed her eyes. She was not going to cry. Certainly not. She did not cry then and she would not cry now. _Then again…_ she felt the corners of her mouth quirking upward in a way that wasn't 'cynical' or 'cool.' She had let herself smile at the little monk like that a few times the pervious night. _…it's all so strange and enthralling and alive, why shouldn't I cry? _She licked her lips, and whispered words that she had lat said five hundred years ago to the audience of one unconscious little chimp.

"…_The next time you wake, little monkey, you will have forgotten everything."_ She swallowed hard, even at the memory. _"…About the days you spent in heaven… and even about those that you met." _She felt her voice crack on the last word, but cleared her throat. Her audeance had grown since then – Jiroushin, the lilies, and Nataku were her listeners now._ "…Even so…the memories that are carved into your soul will never disappear."_ She outright grinned. _"They will become your blood and bone, and give you the strength to live."_ She opened her eyes a little, careful not to let the tears spill over and out. She kicked the water idly. _"…So for now, just sleep."_ She looked up at Jiroushin who was ever standing by her side. _"Embrace in your heart _that_ seed of hope."_

The water sloshed against the sides of her pool. In the quiet she noticed how similar Nataku's steady breathing sounded to Goku's from the previous evening. She had had Nataku with her for so long that she had gotten used to the sound. Jiroushin knelt down next to her and she couldn't help but laugh when he pulled from his armored uniform plates a white silk handkerchief. Her eyes had run after all. She just smiled up at him as he gently wiped the tears off her cheeks. Goodness, how long had it been since she'd cried? Then she slid a hand around the back of his neck and pulled him forward into a kiss. Her world had never 'crumbled' the ways humans' did. It had simply evaporated over the millennia. Jiroushin was the only thing solid and steady that was left to her and, in her own self acknowledged 'strange way,' she loved him for it.

---

_He gave me my name. Goku. _

Goku clambered through the swamp of books, doing his utmost not to step on any rolled up scrolls. It was a wonder even to him that he had managed to swipe the Scripture off of Sanzo. He felt like such an absolute klutz now! "GAH!" He had stepped atop a sturdy pile of books to lift himself over the wall of literature that was blocking his path. Apparently the one small but thick book that _was_ in the pile was at the very bottom, offsetting all the wide and thick books onto, offsetting the lanky and nervous monkey on top of _them,_ and sending him teetering backward into the abyss and with three nasty book-corners to be wedged into his back.

Goku squeezed his eyes shut, ready for the pain, when his fall came to an abrupt stop and a pain zapped up his right arm instead. "Gah," he said again, opening his eyes. Konzen had grabbed hold of hand and had wedged one foot into the stack of books to keep them from spilling apart any further. They made something of a human seesaw.

"Um, thanks," Goku said, getting himself back onto even ground – or as even as it seemed to get in the Marshal's office.

"Tish. You may have sprouted up some two feet but you're still as clumsy as ever, aren't you?" Konzen smirked, setting himself on back on both legs as well. Booby traps in the forms of bookends were everywhere! He gripped Goku's hand for a moment longer before letting go, turning around, and walking onward.

Goku stared after him for a moment, flexing his fingers. It had been almost as if he'd been making certain that Goku was really there. Where ever 'there' was. Also… Goku thought back to how Sanzo's hand had reached through the bars of his prison six years before. He had hauled Goku to his feet without any warning, bits of chain and rock crumbling about them. This guy really was so much like Sanzo it was scary. _And he say's he named me…_

"Hey!" Goku sprinted after him, spilling piles over piles of books as he went. "I am _not_ clumsy!"

"Good job Tiny Monkey! That only took you fifty six seconds to sort out in your brain! Hell, was your body the _only_ thing that grew?!"

_Tiny? The Hell? How far back do we go?_

---

Konzen sat on the couch next to Goku. He tapped out a rhythm on the arm of the couch, before changing up his hand motion a little. Goku looked over at his hand. "You've got the same tick as me," he said blankly.

Konzen snorted despite himself. "I _would._ I got it from you. The rustling used to drive me crazy in my office! Then Tenpou spewed out some Lower World gibberish about," he wrinkled his nose, trying to remember. "If you can't fight them…. If you can't…"

"If you can't beat 'em, join 'em?"

Konzen ran his thumb up his fingers in a collective 'Snap.' "Ya. That."

Holy hell.

It was Goku.

It was really Goku.

He tried to just stare ahead. The boy was probably freaked out as it was. But it was hard. Konzen had seen Tenpou's 'The Apocalypse Hath Come' office a thousand times, and it was no longer that interesting – or traumatizing – to him. Goku however… Konzen kept trying to look at him on the sly. Then, during one such glance, he saw his charge's – his ex-charge's – mouth quirk up.

"How about this," Goku said, fixing those golden eyes on him as he had done so often, but so very long ago. "If you don't mind that I stare, then I don't mind then you stare."

Konzen blinked. Smirked. Nodded. "…Deal."

Acting as one they shifted about on the couch a little, each propping his back against his respective armrest, and stared. …_His hair is shorter. His face doesn't have so much of the baby fat any more. …He still has that birthmark on the nap of his neck._ In this way Konzen looked Goku up and down very slowly, taking in the little resemblances that hadn't changed and the thousand and one that had. At one point he reached out and took up Goku's hand again. He turned it over to see exactly what he had thought he'd felt when the Tiny Money fell over earlier. _Calluses. He's a fighter now. The little flower-picker is an actual fighter now…_ Vaguely he felt Goku tug at a strand of his hair. He could almost have grinned. _He called me the "sun."_ He blinked. _But he didn't remember me._ _He knows nothing about me and I…_ he traced a thumb over Goku's hardened palm. _I know nothing about him either._

There was a clatter of dishes somewhere in the undergrowth of books, followed swiftly by a clatter of laughter, and then again by a clatter of nervous laughter. Konzen closed Goku's hand, and gave it back to him. Goku let his strand of hair slip though his fingers as Konzen righted himself on the couch, again sitting forward. Goku followed suet. Thus, in silence, they awaited their tea.

---

The Hakkai took a gulp of his tea. Goku nestled his own cup in his hands, not drinking it but letting the sent waft up into his nose. The Hakkai's tea smelled different from his. Whiskey. Goku smirked a little. The similarities really were just freaky. And yet he wasn't all that freaked out by them. Freaky.

"So…before I explain where you are, my name is Tenpou." He set his cup down on the table, and Goku could see the strain in his smile that had come over Hakkai's face so often. "I am a Field Martial in the Heavenly Western Army, and an old friend."

_Western _Army? Funny how some things just kept turning up.

The guy…Tenpou… nodded at The Gojyo.

The Gojyo cleared his throat, and met Goku's gaze. "Right, I'm… ah Hell! This is just too weird!" He flopped back into the couch.

"Kenren-" Tenpou warned.

"Come off it, Tenpou! It's weird introducing myself to the pipsqueak as if we've never met!"

"It can't be avoided Kenren. He doesn't remember." That set a thickness into the air.

The Gojyo – Kenren – sighed, and straitened up in his seat again. "Right," again he met Goku's eyes. "I'm Kenren. I am- was- a General and…ya… this is weird." There was a moment of silence, before Kenren blurted out again. "Can I _at least_ tell him what he used to all us!? It'll just be weirder than ever if he just starts calling me 'Kenren' at this point!"

"Kenren, don't overwhelm-"

Kenren, however, directed his attention to Goku again, with newfound resolve. "'Kay. He's _Ten-chan,_ for crying out loud," he said, jerking a thumb at Tenpou, "and I'm just not answering to anything other than _Ken-nii-chan_ at this point. So there!" He again slumped back into the couch, arms folded, and a little more smug.

…_Ten-chan? …_ Goku blinked. He really must have been a kid. That was the only thing Goku could think of for that would have him add the ending to The Hakkai's name. He must have been just a kid. Goku blinked. _And Ken-nii-chan… Nii-chan… 'Brother'… _Well, it made sense, sort of. Gojyo had always been his unofficial brother. But neither of them had ever admitted as much to each other. It was so… _weird_ to hear the confession outright. Really weird. _I really must have been just a kid._ Goku nodded mutely. "Sounds good to me… I guess."

_But I wonder…_ His eyes darted momentarily to Konzen… _What did I call __**him?**_

"Right then, on with the explanation."

Goku's eyes snapped back to Tenpou. This was going to take some getting used to. _Ten-chan?! Really. _

"If my guess is correct, you are within your own self right now, Goku."

"…eh?"

Tenpou made himself more comfortable. He and Kenren had taken up the couch across the table from Konen and Goku. Tenpou now leaned forward to Goku. Goku, had who had pulled his feet up onto the rim of the couch, leaned forward as well. He rather sensed than saw Konzen tensioned next to him, ready to catch him the instant he overbalanced and fell into the table. As if.

"You haven't actually traveled anywhere. You've sort of…regressed into yourself. If I had to guess, your body is still wherever you left it when you entered into this state. …Only asleep."

It was a beautiful relief to see that Kenren was just as slow as Gojyo, and that he, Goku, was not the only one with a blank look on his face at the moment. It was also a relief to see that Tenpou was just as good as Hakkai at noticing this without any commentary.

"Okay. When you have a dream, the dream takes you to different places, right?"

Goku nodded slowly, his mind on many a fantasized restraints.

"But your body remains in your bed, correct?"

"…Yaaaa…" he agreed uncertainly.

"Well, this is very much the same process."

"…You guys expect me to believe that I'm dreaming?" Goku quirked an eyebrow. Fat chance.

"No," Tenpou smiled. "You're not dreaming. But your consciousness is elsewhere right now. Inside you. With us. You see, we're not actual people, Goku."

"Eh!?" Now it was Kenren's turn to take the lime-light of 'utterly stumped.' Tenpou just plowed on.

"I believe, given your present state of mind – that being, not remembering us – that we are simply… a part of you. Not distinct memories but… part of what makes you _**you.**_ We are a now subconscious influence from your past that made you the person you are today."

"Now hold on!" Kenren interrupted. "I feel perfectly whole as a person, thanks very much!"

"As do I," Tenpou shot back impatiently. "But does it not strike you as strange that some of the people in the palace have more distinct faces than others, while others still are utterly two-dimensional in character? How some hallways are clear and crisp while others fade to nothing? How the only memories you can actually _voice allowed_ are memories from three seconds before Goku was pushed into the room?"

Kenren stared at him. "Man, that's just creepy."

Tenpou re-directed his attention back to Goku, "You may have forgotten us as people, but the influence could not be erased. It was engraved on your character. _We_ were engraved on your character. And so, rather than being memories, we are the physical forms of that influence. …Do you follow me?"

Goku blinked. "…You guy's exist inside me?"

Tenpou nodded.

"So you're what, my Conscience?"

Tenpou smirked a little. "We're part of the reason you are who you are so… yes. In a manner of speaking."

Goku looked from Tenpou, to Kenren, to Konzen, and back to Tenpou. "So I'm screwed." He smirked.

This could actually be fun.

---

"…_The next time you wake, little monkey, you will have forgotten everything. …About the days you spent in heaven… and even about those that you met._ _…Even so…the memories that are carved into your soul will never disappear. They will become your blood and bone, and give you the strength to live._ _…So for now, just sleep. Embrace in your heart _that_ seed of hope."_

---

**I hope that made sense for 'the reasons behind Tenpou's, Kenren's, and Konzen's presence.'**


	8. Catching Up and Falling Back

**Chapter Eight**

**Catching Up and Falling Back**

Clean up time.

Tenpou watched with unabashed smugness as Kenren bullied Konzen into a pink bandana. It had been too long! He looked about the room with its mountains of books and forests and scrolls.

…Much too long.

His eyes strayed about, and came to rest of Goku. It was so strange… he looked so grown up.

"You seem preoccupied," he said mildly to the boy standing at his shoulder who was gazing on the fighting pair in front of him.

"…It's just weird to see Sanzo as the total butt-end of the joke and not doing shit about it."

Tenpou looked at Goku and away from the scene at hand, where Kenren was giving Konzen knuckles to the head through the bandana. Tenou glazed over the new range of Goku's vocabulary. "Sanzo?" The name sounded familiar. "Isn't Sanzo the name given to each priest in charge of carrying a Founding Scripture?" That was odd. Why would Goku know about something like that? Then again, Tenpou supposed that he ought to get used to the idea of not being Goku's only source of information. Odd.

"Uh ya," Goku turned to beam up at him, and there was something in his eyes that seemed to glow. That was a little shocking. The Goku had had known had been interested in games and laughs. He'd never shown any interest in something as buttoned down as religion. He himself had been called 'heathen' here in heaven. And yet this… Sanzo… was clearly a much beloved topic of conversation. Curious.

"Sanzo's one of those guys! That's how I got here. I used his scripture." There was a guilty glint in Goku's eye now, but it passes quickly. "Thing is, you guys look a lot like some of my friends back home, and he," Goku nodded at Konzen, "looks a lot like Sanzo. Sanzo- he's the one that pulled me out of the cage!"

Tenpou frowned at Goku. _That_ was weird. A monk looked like Konzen? That, and…"You say we look like people you know back-?"

"What cage?" Konzen had finally disentangled himself from Kenren – more quickly than Tenpou would have believed possible – and was now, hair amuck, pink bandana askew, glaring at Goku. He was panting rather heavily. Behind him Kenren, not a hair out of place, was leaning against an empty book shelf. Relaxed, but attentive.

"Oh…"Goku suddenly looked very sheepish where he stood. "Ya… I guess you wouldn't know about that. The gods put me in a cave. Well, a cage, really. The cave is as far back as I can remember."

A chill set into the pit of Tenpou's stomach, crystallizing the smile on his face. Kenren shifted a little in pace. "Cage?" Tenpou followed Kenren's example, and leaned back against an empty bookshelf. He could use the support. _Of course._ The gods did not kill their enemies. The only person in Heaven permitted to take a life was the War Prince, and Nataku had been unavailable at the time of the Rebel's fall and Goku's capture.

No, the gods had a much 'cleaner' way of dealing with things, so that no blood would be left on their hands. Rather than ending a heathen's misery with a quick death, they sealed him away. A jar. A volt. A cave. Somehow Tenpou unstuck his voice. _Goku, our little Goku. Sealed away for all time. All time. _"For how long were you in the cave?" Even through his smile he could feel the weight of that question. He sensed Konzen and Kenren hold their breaths.

The mute silence was cut to shreds with one loud snort from Goku. "'Come-on!? Think about it! How old was I when I knew you guys?"

Konzen's eyes were fixed on his old charge. "You were brought here when you were twelve. And then you spent a year here. So, thirteen." A year that had been more full for the three gods than decades spanned across the rest of eternity.

"Right," Goku shrugged nonchalantly. "And I'm nineteen now. And I stared on this whole journey with Sanzo and stuff about a year ago. Eighteen!" Goku smirked up at them. "So ya see? Just five years! No big." He smiled at them with those all too shining eyes.

Tenpou let his shoulders slack a little. _Thank goodness._

Kenren whistled. "Remind me to thank this _Sanzo _dude when I see him," he smirked.

Konzen didn't say anything. He just stared at Goku. Tenpou couldn't blame him. Five years or five millennia, the fact remained: they had failed Goku. They had failed to protect him. _Damn. _

"You can count now, I see," Tenpou said again, still smiling. He had been planning to teach Goku himself. They had just never gotten around to it. However, it seemed as if someone had done his job for him. Just for good measure Tenpou shot Konzen and Kenren a glare: Get Back to Work Now.

"Ya." The show in front of them re-commenced. Kenren was hauling Konzen back to the pile they had been stacking. "One of my other friends, Hakkai, taught me-" Suddenly his eyes narrowed in suspicion. Tenpou blinked at him. _Aaand what did I do now?_

"Did you… teach me how to read?" The suspicious glare was replaced with something more apologetic. "Sorry, it's just… I could already read when I got out of the cave and-"

"Yes."

Goku blinked.

A smile, a real smile, touched on Tenpou's face now. Goku grinned up at him. It was so good, so very good, to have their Tiny Monkey again.

"So," Tenpou asked a quarter of an hour later. He was now deliberating over a book on German fairytales. Should it be filed under fairytales, or under horror? Kenren was so much better at making these decisions than he was! He _read _books! He didn't organize them! "Do you have any particular favorites in literature, Goku?" He turned a little to look at the bookshelf Goku was organizing. The monkey was much farther along than he was.

"Hm? Oh, I donno." He muttered under his breath, counting the number of spines, and recounting them once more. "_n' twenty two._ I guess I like books on…food."

Tenpou smirked, turning back to his shelf with its measly four books. "Thank makes sense." Goku had learned how to read from a kid's book on food. Tenpou could still remember the look of horror filled resignation that came over Konzen's face when Goku had offered to read him a bed time story about Mega Meat Bun.

Tenpou opened his mouth, but couldn't voice the memory. He shut it with a small smile. It was only to be expected. He couldn't voice memories that Goku didn't have.

"Any particular type of-" A loud moan interrupted him. He snapped around again to see Goku bent over double, clutching at one of the shelves.

"Goku!" He slipped his way across book covers and grabbed hold of Goku's shoulders. "Goku! Goku, what is it?!" Had he been wrong? Was this Goku's physical form as well as his mental being? Was he in pain?

"…_ng…"_

"What?" Tenpou leaned in closer till his ear was flush against Goku's mouth. "…so… hungry…" An earthquake-instilling rumbled echoed through the room, followed by the relieved laugh of the martial.

---

"Down the hall, and to your left," Konzen watched out of the corner of his eye as a still smirking Tenpou gave Goku directions to the kitchens of the Goddess's Palace. He seemed to be overestimating Goku's 'adulthood.' "…then take a right and another right and you can't miss it. It's the small door in the wall that's-"

"Tenpou. Just shut your trap," Konzen shoved the three books he had been holding into Kenren's arms. Enough was enough. "The pipsqueak's gonna die of hunger by the time he figures the way out!"

"I'm not a pipsqueak! And the hell I will! I can always smell my way there!"

Konzen gave him a cool once over. No, he was not a pipsqueak. But it was still a releaf to know that, nineteen or not, Goku still hadn't outgrown him yet. _That_ would have been traumatizing in the case of a reunion like this one. "And what are you gonna do when some random dick of a god says your breathing to loud? You'll just be shipped back here and it'll cause problems." He nodded at Kenren and Tenpou. "I'll just walk him."

"Aw, come off it! I'll kick his ass! I only went along with that first jerk because he was talking about some goddess-master!"

Kenren snorted.

…Any chance Goku had had of being the 'big guy' and crossing the street by himself just got shot. Konzen was accompanying him now out of spite if nothing else. Little bastard.

"Aww, isn't that cute?" Konzen froze in mid step at Kenren's voice. "No matter how fast they grow they'll always be our widdle children! Don't forget to hold his hand while crossing the street to the big bad kitchen Konzen~" _I swear, you're damned if you do and your damned if you don't. _With infinite grace of movement, Tenpou caught a very heavily and very old edition of the Heavenly Phone Book before it lobed Kenren in the eye.

Clapping one hand a little too tightly on Goku's shoulder – were those real claws? – he steard him out of the office. The last thing he heard on his way out was the marshal's mutter of, "Now Kenren, it's just his way of avoiding cleaning up."

Konzen smirked. _Damn straight._ At least _someone _around here had a clue.

He closed the door behind him and turned to face a ridiculously tall, gangly Goku. Ah. He dropped his arm.

There was a moment of silence, before a smirk spread across Goku's face. "You fuss like an old man. Just like-"

Slam. With lightening speed Konzen drew a few useless documents from his robes, and felled Goku down. "Idiot."

"Ow! Seriously! OW!" Konzen smirked. _Music to my ears._ In all sincerity… it had begun to piss him off, just how much Goku had changed. _This,_ however, was wonderfully refreshing.

"What'd ya do that for, ya jerk?" Goku mumbled, rubbing the top of his head as he fell into stride next to Sanzo.

"…You're chains. What happened to them?"

"Huh?" Goku let go of his head and looked at the spot where Konzen's gaze was directed. His wrist. There was nothing there now except a leather brace. "Oh. You remember those? Sanzo pried them off me."

"The guy who got you out of the cage?"

"Ya!" Goku smirked, twisting his wrist around a little.

They walked in silence a few more minutes. The truth was, from what he knew, Konzen felt a very deep gratitude to this man. This… Sanzo. As Kenren had said, if there was a way to thank him, Konzen would have liked to find it. It was odd, actually. He'd never felt indebted to anyone.

But that was a part of dealing with Goku that he'd gotten used to – strange and unfamiliar emotions often crept their way into his life. _Had _crept into his life.

"So tell me about him." He turned the corner and glared dangers at the stray god that crossed their path. "This Sanzo guy. What's he like?" He looked at Goku on the sly.

The moment the question was out of his mouth he felt something heavy settle on the air. Something…personal. Goku kept his gaze carefully directed to the floor. Almost as if he was… embarrassed.

"S'lame."

"I'm not prying it out of you," Konzen said flatly, yanking open the door at the end of a hallway. The smell of food assailed his nostrils. Truth be told he didn't think he could if he tried. Konzen had to keep reminding himself that Goku and he _did not_ have the same relationship as before. That Goku had spent the last five or six years of his life away from him and _not _running to him, telling him all about the things he had eaten/broken/poked-in-the-eye.

_Who would have thought the day would come that __**I**__ was trying to pry information out of __**him?**_ Still, on some level, Konzen was alright with it. He was alright with the idea that Goku didn't remember him. Didn't remember the pain of losing him…

Nah. That was a lie. Of course he minded that Goku didn't remember him. He minded a lot. More than he cared to think about at the moment. What he didn't mind was that Goku didn't remember how he had lost him. How he, Konzen, had died. That… kind of… made up for it.

As they stepped into the kitchen his desire to know about this Sanzo grew just a little more acute. Was this priest alright for Goku? It was stupid and embarrassing to worry about it now, given that he really could do nothing about it. But still…

A thought, a guilt, very much like Tenpou's reverberated through his head. It was his fault if Goku was, or had been, unhappy. He had to believe that this monk wasn't a total tight-ass bastard. That he was one in a million. After all, it was his, Konzen's, fault for dieing and leaving Goku alone…for this random wandering priest to find.

"Look, I'm telling ya it's nothing to write home ab-" Goku's eyes glazed over. _"FOOD!"_

As discreetly as he could, Konzen tucked himself into a corner as he unleashed the fiend upon its prey. All thoughts of the Sanzo's credentials as replacement-owner were blown from his mind. Just watching Goku made Konzen's mouth go a little dry. The monkey had always had a ridicules appetite, but _this?!_ Konzen watched in mild revulsion as a whole string of sausages vanished down the ape's gullet.

Out of sheer desperation to preserve himself from mental scaring, Konzen toned out the horror flashing before his eyes. If he paid to much attention he would feel physically sick for the next week every time he smelled sausages.

He supposed Goku had his reasons for not telling him everything. …Maybe… _Whatever. I'll figure it out. _Konzen smirked, kicking his legs back as forth as he sat himself up on the kitchen top. _And it doesn't look like Goku's leaving any time soon._

And that was a slight relief. But only very slight. Very, very slight.

Sure enough, after consuming what ought to have been food enough for the entire palace, Goku slumped onto the floor and smiled up at Konzen from across the kitchen. Konzen looked about at the wreckage of ripped plastic and smooshed containers.

"…I'm not covering for you."

Goku just continued to grin contentedly up at him. "Don' worry. I've had practice with getting away. Monks 'n stuff."

Again a touch of worry grazed Konzen's stomach. Did the Sanzo refuse to feed him?

…Well, given the state of the kitchen… he supposed he could understand that.

_**Ah hell. Forget all the worry and the deep thought! The real crux of the matter is that I can't see anyone except myself kicking the Tiny Monkey's ass! **_

…Yes, that really was the bottom line.

Konzen thought back to the stampede of gods that would always be running after the monkey whenever he 'did something wrong.' … like this. Years ago, a sight like this really would have given Konzen a heart attack, because he would have been the one who would have to deal with all the enraged cooks and hungry gods, being the monkey's keeper as he was. However, if what Tenpou had said was true, then he really didn't care. Goku could stuff his face till he was sick. Konzen wasn't going to sweat over a few figmented ass-whips getting unhappy That, and Konzen _really_ had not counted on this big of a mess. He_ might_ have tried to do something_ if_ he had anticipated it. Though it did prickle a little to know that he was one of those gods himself. …A figment…

_Whatever._ His smirked widened at Goku's last comment. "Tish. I know _that_ much, idiot."

---

Kenren had a book half way on the shelf when another earthquake inducing rumbled echoed through the room. "…You've got to be shitting me." He turned around and looked incredulously at the monkey, sitting innocent as could be, with his legs kicked over the arm rest of the lazyboy chair.

Goku threw him an acid glare. "Stuff it."

"Konzen_ just_ brought you back from the kitchen an hour ago! And you're already_ hungry_ again!?"

"Shuuut uuup!" Goku curled his arms around his belly as it howled out again. "You think it's annoying for _you?_ Try traveling for three days straight without anyone to fight except idiot Gojyo, without even a _demon_ in sight! And being hungry _then_!_ That_ is just _agony."_

Kenren quirked an eyebrow at him. He supposed Gojyo was another of these friends he kept mentioning. "You fight?"

Goku smirked a little too smugly for Kenren's taste. He looked off into the random wall, almost nonchalantly. "Ya, sure. I fight."

"Ooh. Well excuse me, monkey brains!" Kenren turned pushed another three books on the shelf. _Blake. Byron. Shelly. Wait, what? Shelly!? Okay, where're the 'S's here…_

Goku stretched out luxuriously, one hand still on his stomach as he tried to push out the knots.

"Oy! Stop playing with yourself and come help me over here. Do you see the 'S's?"

"Wanna spar?"

Kenren looked over at him again. "…Spar?" He tried to take a more critical look at the monkey. It was hard to see past the chubby cheeks and the sticky fingers that Goku had obviously long outgrown. _Right, as a soldier…_

As a soldier, Kenren wasn't exactly sure he liked what he saw. Gangly limbs, a definite sheen of muscle, a face that wasn't so much pouty as honed. No. He wasn't sure he _liked _it… but that didn't mean he couldn't _come_ to like it.

Still General Kenren wasn't one to just click his heals and jump to some sparing match. Even Goku wasn't changing that about him. Besids… there was cake stacked under one of these books. He just had to find it. It would be awesome with the tea!

"Give me one good reason-" he cut himself off as he bent over to the lower shelves to find the 'S's "-for me to waist my time." _And to pass up the cake. _All he had to do was get to it before Tenpou did. Strategically, he ought to succeed. It was clearing out a much larger space than the martial.

… But then, the martial had the most pain-in-the-ass amazing luck of anyone Kenren knew, and it could really suck.

"Ya? You sure you're not just scared."

Kenren smirked. Kid knew how to play. But not well enough. "A _reason,_ Monkey."

"Aw, come-on."

"I ain't _hearin'_ it."

"Ken-_niiiiiiii-chaaaaaan!"_

His hand froze half way to the bookshelf. _Fuck._

Silence rained supreme.

"…Hell, if you're not going to do any work around here I don't see why I should get stuck with your share." He set the books down on an obliging chair, and righted his jacket. …The cake was probably stale by now anyway. "Take this outside?"

The look on Goku's face was something between incredulous and very, very amused and Kenren was sure he caught something that sounded dreadfully like 'pushover' as the little monkey brushed by him.

_Little manipulative shit…_

"So," Goku's voice was all too causal, as if any more emotion would send him into waives of hysterical laugher. "Where to, er, Ken-nii-chan?"

_I should never have told him to call me that. Never! _Kenren turned back to the general room and called out, "Oy! Tenpou! Konzen! We're headed to the Sakura grove!"

Prompt as could be, Tenpou's voice came back at them, "Don't worry, we'll be right behind you~" Bastards. They must have been eavesdropping on the whole conversation.

"Right," he said a little too huskily. "Follow me."

His 'dark military aura of hotteness' was slightly undermined by Goku, who was skipping down the hall next to him as if he had springs on his feet and the smuggest of smug looks on his face.

---

Sanzo lit another cigarette. No, not just 'another' cigarette. His _last _cigarette. You don't appreciate something till it's gone. "Hakkai, when are we getting to the next town? I'm almost out," he said, before taking a drag from this last of last cigarettes.

"Not for another four days, Sanzo. At best."

He nearly bit down through the cigarette with his teeth at that one. Ah. Of course. The ravines. They would take some getting though. That could take up to a _week._ More. They had already been driving for half a day. Hell, couldn't Hakkai at least break the news a little more gently?! Stick-up-the-ass bastard.

The jeep rumbled underneath them

"…Tish. You know you could have warned me before we set out," Sanzo broke the silence again. "A heads up would have been appreciated." Another drag.

"My apologies," was the terse reply.

That just annoyed Sanzo even more. Hakkai wasn't even making an effort to pretend that he wasn't brushing him off. "Ya? Well you can go stick your apologies right up your ass."

"Hm. About the same time as you stick the last of your cigarettes the same way."

…Sanzo extracted his gun from his robes.

And something obstructed the sun. Sanzo looked up. A bolder. A gigantic bolder was hurtling down upon them.

"Holy shit, Hakkai! Drive!" Gojyo gripped his hands onto Hakkai's shoulders, as if pushing their driver forward would be enough to get the jeep out of harms way.

"I'm on it! I'm on it! Let go of me Gojyo!" It was in moments like this that Hakkai's skills as a driver really shone through. He went from fifty miles an hour to one hundred miles an hour in o-point-plus seconds, leaving the better part of Sanzo's innards behind to get smooshed by the bolder.

Dust, grime, mud and more dust. As the lot of it cleared away Sanzo had to cough the remainder out of his lungs… only to find that he'd lost his cigarette.

Someone was going to die.

Sanzo, his lips now tightly pressed together, as if hoping to somehow discover the missing cigarette in some unsought corner of his mouth, turned his head up to squint into the sun and the top of the bolder. There was only one midget he knew who threw boulders around the same way an ordinary person would throw greetings and she, her big brother, his apothecary and his sword master, were all now silhouetted against the sun.

Goku had been right. Kougaiji really did have a thing for entrances from high places. It seemed that even here, where there was nothing by flatland for ever – and the wonderful ravines up ahead – he had to _make_ high ground from which to enter.

Goku…damn.

Without a word, Sanzo aimed his already drawn gun at the smallest of the silhouettes, and fired off two shots. The entire group scattered.

"Oy! What was that for, ya big baldy!?" Almost lazily he brought his eyes back down to the earth in front of the bolder. There stood Kougaiji, lord of the youkai and son of Gyumaoh, his red ponytail billowing in the wind as per usual. Ever by his side was the violet haired apothecary girl, Yaone. The Hakkai of Kougaiji's little band, one might said. Also by his side was his Sword Master and, curiously, Gojyo's older brother, Dokugakuji. Cropped black hair and stupid expression. Nothing new there. Finally, and the reason for his lost cigarette, was Kougaji's little brat of a sister. The Goku of their group. Well, almost…

Lirin waived her small fist at him furiously. _She_ was very much alive. _She_ wasn't quiet. _She_ was annoying the very life out of him with ever sound she made.

_Drop. Dead._

_Please. _

"Well!? Talk! Ya could have hit us."

"Funny. I'm afraid I can't say the same for you," Sanzo replied acidly.

"Hu?" Lirin unclenched her fist and, even though Sanzo couldn't be sure of it from this distance, her attention was drawn to something behind him. Just behind him. In the back seat.

"What's up with _him?"_

Sanzo redirected his gun and fired another shot. There was a burst of fire, and Kougaiji stood in front of his sister, the heat from his spell shaking the air. The molten scrap-of-a-bullet plopped into the no-man's land between the Jeep and the bolder. "I believe my sister asked you a question."

Before he could shoot again, Hakkai's hand clamped down on his wrist. He shot a glare at the driver now leaning over him, about to tell him to back off and get out of his personal space. And then he saw Hakkai's smile. …It hadn't gotten that creepy in a long time.

"He's not altogether there," Hakkai said coolly, fixing his smile now on Kougaiji's band. "So we were wondering if you could give us something of a freebee today."

Kougaiji lowered his arms. "Oh?" He was cocky, but no one could bee too cocky with Hakkai looking at him like _that. _Still cocky, however.

"Don't get any fancy ideas!" Gojyo slurred from the backseat. "It's for your own safety!" Sanzo didn't need a youkai's keen eyesight to know that the back of his head was now getting a meaningful red-eyed glance.

Kougaiji gave him one contemptible once-over, which only made his wrist twitch. "I'll repeat my sister's question: What happened to Son Goku?"

"Your guess is actually about as good as ours," Hakkai said casually; as casually as one could say, leaning over a trigger-happy monk to keep him from firing in all directions. Still, for Hakkai, that was pretty casual.

"Aw, come-on! What's up with Monkey boy?!" Lirin leaned back against the bolder and slid down into a squat in the shade. Dokugakuji was already leaning nonchalantly against the rock. Gently, Hakkai eased Sanzo's hand back into his lap, and allowed himself to cave back into his own seat. With the band of demon's perched in the shadow of the giant rock, escaping the sun's heat, and with the four men leaning over the side of the Jeep just some twenty feet away from them, it would have been impossible for an observe to know that these two groups were violent enemies.

But Sanzo didn't want to be friendly today. He didn't want to 'respect' Kougaiji. He didn't want to deal with Lirin's more than usually intolerable vivacity. The only thing he wanted in the world right now was for a whole army of youkai to come at him so that he could brutally mascara the lot. As it was, it seemed that Kougaiji's band would have to play substitute.

"It would seem," Hakkai said, choosing his words carefully, "that Goku has decided to go in search of his memories."

Oh, Sanzo did not want to get stuck here while explanations were oh so casually flying over his head.

"…Eh?" Lirin cocked her head to the side.

But it seemed that was exactly what was happening.

"Um, you see, Goku's memories were never exactly intact." Hakkai ran his fingers through his hair nervously. "And well, he apparently decided that enough was enough and-"

"-And shit happened, and enough _is_ enough! Drive Hakkai." What was this? A tea party? They had four days of driving ahead of them, at least, till the next Marlboro Pack, and Hakkai wanted to exchange life stories. "And that's an order."

Sanzo often pushed Hakkai, Goku and Gojyo around to do the smelly-end jobs. That was normal. He did not, however, normally order out real commands. Of course, it _was_ the Sanzo Party, and of course he _was_ the official leader. But he wasn't. Not really. The best way of describing Sanzo's position would have been to borrow Homer's words. He was 'first among peers.' That was why, when Sanzo gave an order, a_ real_ order, it was either rejected completely, as had once happened when Gojyo chose to abandon the group to face off a man known only as 'God,' or it was followed without a breath of revolt. _That _was Sanzo's position and _that_ was his right.

Hakkai blinked, and then nodded, turning his eye back onto the road, or what was left of it. "Yes sir."

Sanzo settled back in his seat.

"Hold on a minute." Sanzo bristled. He didn't like the tone in Kougaiji voice. "I've let you guys slide more than once." He didn't turn his eyes away from the road, _willing_ Hakkai to turn the engine on. "Why? Because I never wanted to beat you when you weren't at the top of your game and were handicapped by some random prick."

_What is this? Do I want to run away?_

"But I'm afraid that I can't let this one slide."

_No… I'm not running way. _

"Because, you see, while I can empathies with a crippled team…"

_I'm just pissed off at that damn monkey. Fighting this pansy Demon Lord without his pep is like taking a shower without any damn towels. _A strange allusion, but oddly appropriate.

"…your abandonment issues really aren't my problem. I'm sure you understand."

_I just feel so damn exposed. _

Maybe they had all gotten lazy. Maybe none of them had actually expected for Kougaiji to attack them while Goku, his greatest rival, was down. Whatever the problem was, Sanzo dragged his eyes away from the road too little too late. Kougaiji was already hovering above him, his claws drawn, ready to gut him open, too close for Gojyo's staff-like Shakugetsujyo, and too close for Hakkai to throw up a chi barrier.

_Damn. We're all so pathetic._ Sanzo blinked up at him. And, being only human, he was the most pathetic of the lot.

A screeching clatter erupted, like nails scraping down a blackboard, and for the second time that day, someone blotted out the sun over Sanzo's head.

He blinked. And blinked again. And blinked a third time at the yellow cape and tattered trousers hovering just above him. For a moment longer Goku bracketed himself against the rim of the Jeep door, Nyoi-Bo braced against Kougaiji's claws. His legs shook. He teetered. His footing slipped. The staff-like weapon grated along Kougaiji's claws again as it spilled from his fingers to dissolve into nothing before it hit the ground, and the force of the attack finally overbalanced him as his knees buckled.

Sanzo shot up in his seat to catch him. "Goku," he shook his charge by the shoulder. "Goku!" Goku's head lolled back onto Sanzo's shoulder, and Sanzo found himself fixed down by two golden eyes. Lightless. Completely lightless. Goku was still unconscious. Then… _how?_

"I think…" Sanzo snapped up from Goku's face to look over the side of the Jeep again. Kougaiji was standing there, massaging his fingers. His three subordinates were at his side now, "…despite however much both of us might have wanted for this to remain uncomplicated, you really are going to have to explain a few things, Sanzo." He flexed his hand.

Sanzo didn't say anything. He looked back down at Goku. The boy's eyes had begun to slide shut again. He was losing him…again. _Goku, what the hell is going on in there?_

---

Goku smirked as he tapped his heal out of the ground. It was hard. That was good. "I hope ya know I ain't going easy on ya, Niiiii-chaaan."

"Tish. You're never gonna let me live that down are you?" Kenren cracked his knuckles. "Who would have thought you'd grow up to be such an asshole."

Goku's smirk just widened. "Weapons or no weapons?" Kenren quirked an eyebrow. He reached both hands into his coat… and extracted a pair of dueling pistols. They were exquisite. Goku could see that much, even from here. Lined with some kind of gold-leaf, they were state of the arts. Sanzo would have traded three packs of smokes to have five minutes alone with one of those. And for Sanzo, who didn't fork anything over easily, that was a _lot._ "What? Keep those handy for every time a husband challenges you to a duel over a new lady friend?"

It was Kenren's time to smirk. "It's_ that_ obvious that I'm a stud, is it?"

Goku snorted. "Don't kid yourself." He was beginning to get used to the idea that all the people he met here were basically copies of the guys back home, as Kenren was of Gojyo. It was weird, but for some freaky reason it didn't bother him. Not at all.

"Aw, Tiny Monkey's feeling the pressure? Anyway, these aren't for sharing. They're both mine." With one easy swing of the wrists both guns were comfortably nestled in his hands, ready for use and looking as if they'd been molded into his palms.

"Dude. That's just greedy." _Well, here goes nothing._ He still wasn't sure whether or not his Nyoi-Bo would materialize in this world but… Goku reached out his hand, concentrated and… amidst a cloud of sparks the demonic staff laid itself out along his two outstretched hands.

Kenren's eyes widened. "Now _that's _cool. Where'd you get it?"

Goku smirked, relieved. He supposed that, following Ten-chan's logic – heh, the nickname was actually growing on him – his Nyoi-Bo was also an 'influence on his life.' After all, it _had _bailed him out of many a tight spot. "Out of a jar." And the best part was he wasn't even lying.

"Ooh! What's the wager!?"

Kenren and Goku both turned toward the sound of Tenpou's voice. The martial and Konzen were happily – at least, in Tenpou's case – nestled under one of the Sakura trees, sitting on a suspiciously-home-knit-looking quilt. They had a whole spread of fruits and bottles in front of them. Tenpou waived at them.

"What is this, a goddamn picnic?" Kenren, still holding his guns, put his hands on his hips.

Konzen eyes the guns wearily. "Don't shoot him." It was weird. He had a ponytail. He wore a dress… thing. And he sported some kind of high-heal sandals. And yet, at the same time, his glare was just as scary as Sanzo's. …It just didn't produce the same effect.

Kenren waived a hand in his general direction, but before he could gush out a laid back 'yeah, yeah,' Goku snorted.

"As if he could. I've got a history of dodging bullets." He got into an offensive position. "Weapons are _so _on."

Everyone blinked at him for a moment. Then Kenren lowered his arms to hang loose by his side, and smirked. "You know_ you_ are going to have to explain that one later. Alright tough guy, let's see what your made of."

No one moved for a moment.

"I'm betting against Kenren~" Tenpou sang.

Kenren smirked, not tearing his eyes away from Goku. "Jerk."

Goku's joints eased up, and he shot off. It was fantastic. It was like fighting Gojyo – who was his usual sparing partner – only with a completely different weapon which he, Ken-nii-chan, handled completely flawlessly. Goku saw him raise his gun, faulted, and stopped short. One of the bullets punctured his cloak his had whipped out in front of him. _I wonder if Ten-chan's as good at darning as Hakkai?_ Judging from the state of his office, probably not.

_My turn._ Goku pelted forward and eased into a slide. Kenren saw it coming, and had his right hand well out of the way before Goku tried to kick the gun out of his grip. Goku smirked. _Got him._ "Nyoi-Bo, extend!" The staff in his hand shot out of proportion and, angled as it was, its tip crashed right into Kenren's left wrist. With a curse of pain, he dropped one of the pistols.

"HA!" Goku pivoted on his free hand and kicked the gun into the oblivion of Sakura trees. …And now he had to get out fast. Kenren was already aiming his other pistol at Goku's arm. A flesh wound. But it would declare him the winner. Fat change. _Nothing for it._ Goku punched the ground.

Kenren lost his footing amidst the upheavals of earth, and toppled over. A victory cry gushing up through his throat, Goku scrambled up to straddle Kenren and pin him to the ground. It was in that moment, as he got up and above the spirals of dust and saw everyone, exactly where they were, that he felt a jolt of terror course through him.

There was Kenren, sprawled out in front of him, there was Tenpou under the Sakura tree, his attention completely held by the fight and there, sitting next to him, was Sanzo. And there was Kougaiji shooting across the – fantastically – hard ground, right at him. And Tenpou was too wrapped up in the fight to notice. None of them… noticed.

Goku kicked up a storm behind him. He had to make it. He had to get there in time. He did. Goku threw up his Nyoi-Bo just in the _nick_ of time. What kind of cheep move was Kougaiji trying to pull?! He braced himself against the force of the hit, and the scraping clatter of nails on staff ripped through his ears. Good god. And that could have been Sanzo's scalp…

He blinked up at Kougaiji and saw the confusion there. _What's…happening to me?_ In the next moment however, his old rival's face vanished. He saw standing with his Nyoi-Bo raised against think air. The Sakura petals were falling around him. Kenren had propped himself up on his elbows and was now staring at him in shock. Goku blinked again. His knees gave in, and his fell back.

"Goku!" A pair of white gloved hands, not black, caught him before could fall too far and hit his head on something. His concentration slackened, the Nyoi-Bo disintegrated in his fingers. "Tenpou! What's happening to him?!" he could hear the raw alarm in Konzen's voice. He doubted if Sanzo would ever let it shine through that clearly. "Goku?! Can you hear me!?" Goku nodded.

If… if he was honest with himself, and he usually was …He liked it here. He liked calling Kenren 'Ken-nii-chan.' He liked that Tenpou was actually impressed by how much he'd grown up. He liked the raw emotions that Konzen gave off, even if he still wasn't certain how to respond. He liked all of it.

And yet… and yet, for a moment back there he had thought that it was Gojyo, not Kenren, sprawled out… in the back seat of the Jeep. That it had been Hakkai, not Tenpou, sitting next to Sanzo. Sanzo… not Konzen. And, more certainly than anything… he had thought… had been sure… that, for a moment, Sanzo had been in danger. Out of the entire Sanzo Party he was the only one who could have caught that attack in time. He had. He did. Didn't he?

Goku felt himself blacking out. The voices were becoming muggy. Hakkai's, Sanzo's, Tenpou's and Konzen's. All of them.

"…Goku. Goku!..."

"…Easy Konzen. He's not in danger…."

_What's…what's happening to me?_

---

**Kougaiji has entered the picture! And this is my longest chapter so far for this story.**

**And so, people, **_**Review!**_


	9. Going Somewhere?

**In this chapter I'm going to be referring to events that happened in **_**Reload Episodes 5 and 6**_** – which did not appear in the manga! Personally I really don't like the Reload and Gunlock episodes, but this plot line actually ties in with my story very well.**

**For those who have not seen the episodes in question, all you have to know is:**

**A female youkai steals Sanzo's, Gojyo's and Hakkai's unhappy memories, turning our heroes into little better than zombies. She can not get to Goku's unhappy memories because his memories have all been sealed away. This leaves it up to Goku to save his friends. Goku enlists the aid of Kougaiji and company. They save the Sanzo Party by restoring their memories to them, and emerge victorious. Obviously. **

**Also, I am now establishing when this story takes place. It takes place after the "Against the Stream" arc, and before the "Even a Worm" arc. **

---

**Chapter 9**

**Going Somewhere?**

Hakkai had parked the Jeep in the shade of the bolder and was now retelling to Kougaiji and company the story of Goku's desire to reclaim his lost memories, and his actions thereafter. Gojyo, still sitting in the Jeep, was leaning back against the bolder, smoking one of his still plentiful Hi Lites. If this went on too much longer Sanzo was just going to take his crappy cigarettes by force, and smoke his crappy cigarettes! Damn. Almost unconsciously he ran his hand through Goku's hair. He only blinked when his fingers came in contact with the gold diadem on his forehead. He looked down at his charge. Goku's eyes had closed completely. It had been too much of a hassle to move him, so he'd just remained in the front seat. It was fine. Most of him was wedged onto the floor anyway.

_It's like the first time he went berserk…_ Goku's diadem had snapped off just a week after Sanzo had freed him from the cave. The monkey had taken out a solid piece of the monastery's wall by the time Sanzo got there. After it was all over, and his diadem was back on his head, Goku had slumped over… unconscious…to rest his head on Sanzo's lap. They had stayed like that all night. Hadn't really had a choice. Goku still wore his ridiculously heavy chains back then, so there had been no chance of Sanzo moving him anywhere, let alone carrying him to a suitable place of rest.

Sanzo's frown deepened and he brushing his fingertips over Goku's hair again. _Something… he said something then…_When Sanzo had had Goku pinned down, about to reset his diadem, Goku had cried. Cried in relief. Sanzo had left the monastery for the day, and when Goku hadn't seen him he had thought… Sanzo's eyes narrowed. _Had thought…_

"_Nn…B- but…ggh!" Goku's words and whimpers came tumbling out, all in one wet and sloppy mess, while his eyes fixed on Sanzo with such raw __**need,**__ that Sanzo was completely gripped by them. No one had ever looked at him like that. " I thought…you were leavin' me behind…again…"_

Sanzo's eyes snapped open. _'Again?'_

"So Goku is the monster from five hundred years ago?" Kougaiji glanced over at the little cretin now drooling on Sanzo's robes. "It makes sense."

Kougaiji had once fought Goku in his berserk form. The effects had been catastrophic. Still, Sanzo realized, the prince had never actually known the reason behind Goku's complete change. He had probably spent many a sleepless night attempting to figure it out, coming up blank. And now he had his answer.

"…Ya, it does answer a lot of questions," Dokugakuji leaned back against the bolder, right by his brother. "But what I don't get is how you guys didn't see this coming."

"Eh?!" Gojyo turned to look at him in outrage. "What the hell, man? Well _excuse us_ if Mister Brilliant over here can know _everything… in hindsight!"_

"That's not what I'm talking about," Dokugakuji shot him a dark glare. "I mean, even _I _knew that the runt wasn't comfortable with the whole 'memory loss' thing. And if I'd know also that he didn't have his _own _memory, then I fail to see how this could have taken _anyone _by surprise."

"How do you mean 'wasn't comfortable with the whole 'memory loss' thing?" Hakkai twisted around in his seat to look at Dokugakuji.

The big man obviously wasn't too comfortable with all the eyes on him. He shifted against the rock uneasily. "You know. He once said something about it not being anyone else's choice to take a memory, right?"

"I have no recollection of that," Sanzo chirped in frostily.

"…You wouldn't." All this head-turning was going to do something to his bones. Sanzo now twisted around to look at the apothecary, Yaone. Hakkai had a soft spot for her, didn't he? She was glaring back at all of them right now, but not as if she was angry. Only as if she was trying to remember. "You wouldn't remember… because you weren't there. You had been ensnared by the demon Suika, she who stole the worst memories of all whom she met, so as to 'bring peace' to tormented people."

Something pricked on the rim of Sanzo's memories. Yes, there had been a freaky demon lady like that. She had given them food and lodging, and had stolen their memories in the night, leaving them little better than empty shells. Goku had been the only one unaffected by her… _because his worst memories had already been stolen. _

It was a shock, to realize it. Certainly, Sanzo had known all along, in the back of his mind, that that had was the reason Goku was able to move around and save them all, while he, Hakkai and Gojyo had been rendered useless. But he had never brooded on it. Sidetracks like that episode were more than annoyingly common on their journey, and if there was one thing Sanzo was going to forget more quickly than a sidetrack, it was a sidetrack featuring _Goku__** saving**_ _all of them._

…But to realize it again, in this context, with Goku's head lolled lifelessly on his lap…

"That's right!" Dokugakuji snapped his fingers at Yaone as the memory flooded back to him as well. "The three of you had just driven off, back to Suika, right after Sanzo had tried to ditch his scripture and said that he 'quit' being a priest." Sanzo twitched. So that _had _actually happened. He had been trying to block out Goku's voice when the monkey had complained about it afterwards. The more he dwelled on it, the more Sanzo remembered.

Dokugakuji kept talking. "We then talked it out with Goku – he seemed pretty upset – and managed to figure out what was going on and what had happened to you three. The second he realized that I was a matter of stolen memories, he jumped up and began to run back to the town you'd all come from."

Dokugakuji kicked at the ground and a little cloud of dust rose around his boot. "I told him to stop then." He wasn't meeting anyone's eye. He was fixed on his boot. Perhaps he had some kind of stage fright. Or perhaps he just wanted to avoid looking at his little brother, who was right next to him, when he said what he said next. "I told him about Gojyo's past. Told him that, perhaps, some memories are better left forgotten." Dokugakiji smirked then, and looked up at all of them.

There was almost _admiration_ in his eyes now. "Kid didn't miss a beat. Didn't blink an eye at what I said about Gojyo. Just shot back, _'The only person that can decide for you, if it's worth forgetting, is you!'_ …I have to say, that stuck with me for a while. And there was nothing self pitying about it either. He just seemed so _sure _of himself." He nodded in agreement with himself. "If was very impressive."

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Again, Sanzo looked back down at the top of Goku's head. What Dokugakuji had said certainly gave him something to think about. More than he wanted to, if fact. It seemed that the more he learned about this… situation… he more he learned that Goku had been long fixated on it himself. He supposed it made sense. He would have been curious too, if all his memories before the age of thirteen were missing.

_Thirteen…_ For Sanzo, to have forgotten about all his memories before the age of thirteen would have meant to forget his master. Sanzo blinked, a sickening feeling churning quietly in his gut. He could almost sympathies in the horror of such a possibility. Almost. But what if he and Goku _had _been the same, as the Goddess had alluded? What if the man Goku had forgotten, Konzen, had been to him what Koumyou Sanzo had been to-

But Sanzo had just never pegged Goku as the type to worry about this sort of this.

_Wrong. He was never the type to worry about it __**aloud.**_

"So whaaaat?" Lirin sat perched on the nose of the Jeep, kicking her feet up and down. "He's just going to stay like this till he gets his memories back?"

Kougaiji smiled over at his sister. "I don't think either Sanzo or I are willing to wait that long." Sanzo shot him a poisoned glare. Kougaiji leaned against the Jeep next to his sister. "I _can _help you out here," he said, flexing his fingers.

"Sorry if I don't take that to heart ten minutes after you nearly skewered me."

Kougaiji dropped his hand and smirked across at the expanse of flatland in front of them. In the distance, near the horizon, one could just make out the ravines. "Look. I'll say this again. Your personal team dynamics is something I really don't care about and I'm not going to sit here playing nice while you guys sweat it out." He turned to look at Sanzo again. "But this seems to be going a little deeper than team dynamics and if that Goddess wasn't the one who sent Goku the envelop with all that information, then who was?"

Ah. This was another thought Sanzo had not been too keen to follow. Indeed, as far as he had gone on it had been to think that, whenever he _did_ meet the mysterious envelope sender, he would leave a bullet in his head.

He jerked. "What?" he snapped at Dokugakiji.

"I said 'Ni Jianyi.' He could have sent it. That bastard knows everything about everyone. He knew who I was before I came to Houtou Castle. Knew what I did. Knew… _everything,_" he spat.

Ni Jianyi, the only human in the demon stronghold, Houtou Castle; the lead scientist in the revival experiment of Gyumaoh, which the Sanzo Party had been enlisted to bring to a stop; and, if Sanzo's suspicions were correct… the holder of the Muten Scripture.

---

Kougaiji twitched. _Ni Jianyi. _The man who had once brainwashed him, used him as a killing puppet, imprisoned Yaone, abducted his baby sister and nearly done irrevocable damage to her mind, and who had branded him as 'The Rabbit Prince.' There wasn't a fiend in this world or the next whom Kougaiji despised more.

His eyes trailed to the unconscious Goku. Goku was his rival; a driven young man; a loyal fighter; an honorable opponent. Could he let Goku be toyed with as he himself had been so loath to be toyed with? They were enemies… but then…_rivals._ However, if this was a plan of the Revival Group to sabotage the Sanzo Party, gain the scripture, revive Gyumaoh, and thus revive his own mother… how could he stop it? If he had been able to think as himself while brainwashed he would not have expected or desired any of Goku's pity. He could still remember their very first battle, when he had asked the boy what his reason to fight was – why it was that he fought when he had nothing at stake.

"_God, dude. What do you keep talking about?! I fight for myself. __**Me!**__ That's reason enough."_

Kougaiji blinked when his stare at Goku was interrupted by Sanzo's hand which, seemingly unconsciously of the monk, brushed a few stray hairs from his charge's face. Kougaiji looked from monkey to monk and back again. Sanzo, who now also appeared deep in thought, still did not seem to notice as his fingers splayed through his charge's hair. And Goku…

…For one mad moment, Goku didn't seem like the formidable rival Kougaiji knew. A child…just a child. Heh, Goku would have hated that train of thought. Kougaiji knew that Goku was the youngest of the Sanzo Party – in appearance, anyway – and was always treated accordingly. Indeed, were it not for the fact that Goku had bested him once too often on the battle field, Kougaiji would have said the monkey looked too young for his age.

…But this was different. With his cheek was squashed against Sanzo's chest, his mouth slightly open, and his eyelids fluttering, as if his eyes really were seeing, Goku, for that one mad moment, reminded Kougaiji, not of himself, but of Lirin – of his baby sister – when Dokugakuji had brought her out, naked and trembling, from Ni's laboratory.

"…Sanzo."

The priest nearly jumped out of his skin at the call back to earth. He blinked viciously at Kougaiji, his grip visibly, if unconsciously, tightening on Goku's head.

"I expect you know full well that I am capable of conjuring fiends from other plains?" Kougaiji flexed his fingers experimental. Where he had been expecting soft human skull they had instead clashed with Goku's Nyoi-bou. …He was going to need a manicure.

"What of it?"

"Well, the state of mind plays a key role in plain-travel. If you remember, I wasn't able to summon any fiends while I was under Ni's control, because the presence in my body wasn't actually my ori-"

"-Your point?" Sanzo cut in.

Kougaiji smirked. "-That following a person's presence, Goku's in this case, to another plain, as well as sending – say, three? – other _presences _after him would be as easy for me as chanting that sutra is to you." He shrugged and folded his arms. "Just a fun fact. Felt like sharing. You know?"

---

It smelled really nice. He smiled. Fingers ran absentmindedly through his hair. Goku relaxed again. He almost felt as if he could just slip back into sleep now…No. No he couldn't. Sanzo had been in danger and he, Goku, was the one who could-

He blinked sleepily, inhaling again. Flowers? His smile widened. Konzen.

He let out a quiet groan, and stretched. Now_ that_ was uncomfortable.

"OUCH! Don't move so much, you idiot! My knees are already asleep for having played cushion to your sorry fainting fit!"

Goku blinked.

"What Konzen is trying to say is that you shouldn't move too much right now Goku, because you're just coming out of a relapse, so please take it easy."

"Geez man, be cool. It's not the kid's fault you have old-man, knobbly knees."

Goku blinked again, and found himself looking up at Konzen, who had bent over him. It was funny, but just now, with the light coming in from the window just so, and catching his hair just like that, and with him above him and everything… he really did look like the sun.

Goku's sleepy smile split his face. Konzen glared the harder. Goku frowned. "Right… sorry… legs asleep… moving…"

"Stay _down,_ you idiot! I_ just_ told you not to move!" Konzen held Goku down by the shoulders.

"Ya, you retarded, idiot monkey?" Goku turned his head to see Kenren leaning against a wall just next to him. They weren't in the sacura grove anymore. This room… Goku hadn't been in here before, and yet, as with so many rooms, he knew that he had… a long time ago.

"That's enough from all of you!" Tenpou wandered into Goku's frame of vision.

"Dude, where's the tea?"

"…Oh, heh. That."

"…I'll make it."

"It's just I got rather confused about the preparing of the liquid-"

"It's called _boiling water,_ Ten'."

It was just as the tea was finally made that Goku really began to come round. He was on a bed, with his head in Konzen's lap. Why, he couldn't understand for the world of him, seeing as there was a perfectly nice pillow just inches away. However, Konzen seemed adamant about him not moving an inch, and kept running his hand through Goku's hair.

_Fucking fuss pot. _

It was only when he had to actually take a gulp of tea that Konzen let him sit up. Despite the tea, his voice was still a rasp when he finally spoke. "What happened?"

As expected, everyone looked at Tenpou, who quirked a smile at the recognition.

"It would appear," he said, sitting a little further down the bed from Goku and Konzen, "that you called yourself back to 'the real world' for a moment."

A collective blink.

"That is, you_ made_ yourself go back. Some instinct in you _forced_ body and soul together again for a moment."

Goku swallowed. He wasn't sure he liked that. "So that… that was real?"

"I would presume so, yes." Tenpou frowned visibly. "Goku, it may not be my place to pry but… what did you see?"

Goku was quiet for a moment. He supposed it was alright to tell. To tell truth, he was a little too relived at the moment to be nervous about talking about it. If everything he had seen was real, then the shock in Kougaiji's eyes had been real too. _I made it in time._

"…I saw Sanzo nearly get killed." He shrugged, trying now to count the number of leaves in his cup of tea. "'s nothing unusual. We're always getting attacked, the way we live. Ya know? Only… there are just some attacks which only I can clear. And… and this was one of them. …So I cleared it."

He waited. He didn't know for what, but he waited. And then he felt a hand on his shoulder. Now that he'd told them he began to wish he hadn't. Kenren crouched down in front of him. "Oy, listen man, if you…want to go back- I mean, it's completely your call. I mean, you don't have to…" he trailed off.

…_stay…_

The word hung in the air. It should have just completed the sentence. Really though, it was a plea.

Then, for the first time, it actually crashed down upon Goku.

Goku looked at him for a long moment, his eyes widening with realization. It was still so strange… a Gojyo with black eyes.

_Should_ he go back? They probably needed him, weird as _that _was to take seriously. When he had stepped into that cupboard Goku had not even tried to imagine what would happen after he left. Now it seemed like the _obvious_ thing to think about now, but back then…

But if he left… He hadn't even _begun_ remembering his past. Goku recalled Hakkai, and how he smiled, _really _smiled, when he mentioned something nice about Kanan. Gojyo also – he got really pumped up whenever they faced off against Kougaiji, because it gave him a chance to hang out with his brother; and the sucker thought he was fooling everyone. Ha. And Sanzo… and how he would actually relax sometimes… when he made orange paper airplanes.

Goku… wanted memories like that.

"_Hell, do what you want."_

He jerked, and turned to look at Konzen. Konzen, however, just blinked back at him. "…What?"

"…Nothin'." He then turned back to Kenren, and sighed. Closed his eyes. Opened them. And smirked. "Geez, they can look after themselves for a little longer. They've had a whole lifetime with their pasts. I can have a few days with mine."

Kenren grinned from ear to ear. "…Now that's the stuff." He gave Goku's shoulder a last squeeze, straitening up, drained his cup of tea, offered it to Goku, who took it, and then raised his hand in declaration. "I NOMINATE GOKU TO WASH THE DISHES BECAUSE HE HAD TO BE A WUSS AND FAAAAINT~"

"_EH?!?" _

_---_

**I am so sorry for the delay. College applications have been fun. Ya. **

**But I hope you enjoy this chapter and Remember~ The more you review, the more inspired my chapters. Review!**


	10. A Cave

**This Chapter is dedicated to a dear friend of mine, ****Bookwormofmassiveproportions****. Her Harry Potter stories are fantastic and you should all go read them. :P ****Bookwormofmassiveproportions****, this chapter, in which there are a few more HakkaixYaone touches and wherein Kougaiji takes up his role as Gandalf to stand guard over the Fellowship, shelter the ravine, and shout **_**"YOUUUUU…SHALL NOT… PAAAASS!"**_** to all the baddies, is for you. 3**

…

**Chapter 10**

**A Cave**

Gojyo cracked his knuckles as he walked in through the mouth of the cave. Well, it wasn't Buckingham Palace, but it would do. "Oy, bro!"

"Hm? What is it?" Dokugakuji stepped up beside him, followed by Yaone.

Gojyo took a few steps forward, trying to search out a good place to stretch out. He might be lying around for a while. _Idiot monkey._ "Any hot chicks come this way and you just point them _riiight _to my soft defenseless form, m'kay?" He smirked over his shoulder.

"Tsh. Don't worry. I'll be sure to call in all the local transvestites."

Gojyo wheeled around. "Don't even joke about shit like that."

"Please don't be alarmed, Mr. Gojyo," Yaone cut in oh-so-cutely. "Lord Kougaiji has promised that your bodies will not be touched while your consciences are absent."

Gojyo snorted, reluctantly tearing a wary, freaked-out eye away from his brother, and looking at Yaone instead. He blinked, and then smirked wolfishly. "That so? Hakkai'll be _sooo_ disapoi-GAKH!"

Out of nowhere a hand had latched onto the back his neck. "_Come_ Gojyo. I've found the most uneven, inhospitable strip of cave floor, _just for you~"_

"GHUuuuh," was as much as Gojyo could gurgle as the hand on the back of his neck increased its pressure, successfully steering him away from Yaone and Dokugakuji.

…

"…"

"Having second thoughts?"

Sanzo shot a glare at the demon prince.

"Can you blame me?"

"Not at all. Makes me glad not to be in your shoes right now, actually." Kougaiji squinted up at the narrow strip of light coming down between the two walls of stone towering above them. Little of it reached as far down as the bottom of the ravine. Instead, it dappled the earth in bright patches. The entrance to their cave was just shy of one such patch. Just tinted by the light.

The last two days had not been pleasant.

Kougaji and his party could travel swiftly by flying dragon. Sanzo's pace had been crippling by comparison. It had taken the jeep the rest of the day and into the next morning to reach the labyrinth of ravines that had been on the horizon when they had all first run into one another. Kougaiji had to say, watching the car's slow progress from the air, he almost had to admire Sanzo for still being sane a year and a half after first embarking on this venture to the West.

It had then taken another day and a half to get down the ravine to the cave in question. Kougaiji had weighed the pros. and cons. of their present location carefully. Pro: The cave they had reached was very well hidden and the only reason he heard about it was because Dokugakuji, his Sword Master, had known that a good deal of mining had been done around here, but had been abandoned a few decades ago. The cave was actually a never-completed tunnel. Even if there were old miners still living in the nearest village, this cave wasn't one that would be worth the remembering. It was unknown. That was the pro. Now, Con: this cave just happened to be at the bottom of a ravine, and thus was very, very, very vulnerable to any sort of attacks from above, or even from the sides.

Kougaiji felt like a child who tactlessly runs into a corner, curls up in a ball, and then hopes beyond hope that no one _just happens_ to notice him.

And the worst part was: it really _was_ the best they had.

Of course, they could always travels to a more secure area. But that would mean at least another three grueling days flying over Sanzo's Jeep, going as slowly as a snail. It would mean at least another three days in which one of Gyokumen Koushou's stooges could see him 'in cahoots' with Sanzo, and that was the last thing he needed right now – thank you very much. And it would mean at least another three days in which Goku would be unconscious, his presence unchecked and unaccounted for.

_Tish. And to think I'm actually worried about the little shit. This is pathetic. _He bit into his thumbnail, looking back to the earth. _Still… at least I'm not nearly as pathetic looking as someone else here._ Because of the extra few days of traveling Kougaiji had been able to witness firsthand that at which Hakkai and Gojyo didn't even bate an eyelash under the circumstances: the continuous deterioration of Genjo Sanzo.

He watched the monk now. It wasn't anything… outright. He couldn't call it a breakdown. No. _Deterioration _was the right word for it. He was like a vase that kept getting chipped. One chip, and the vase still looked fine. Another scrape – it give the vase character. And another, and another and another. But then there came a point when the viewer just realized: the vase looks god awful and just needs to be chucked because there's no way of fixing it up again.

That was Sanzo. He looked awful just by virtue of _being_ there.

Sanzo said something.

"Hm?"

"I said, how long are you going to need to prepare for this… ritual… thing?"

Kougaiji studied his face for a moment, searching for just one trace of nervousness. No dice. The monk may have lost his charge, but not his nerve.

"A few hours. Pushing a presence out of this world is a more delicate process than pulling one into this world, and that's saying something. There are three of you. And I'll be working with a plane, Goku's mind, that I know absolutely nothing about. It'll take some time." Sanzo twitched. "Nervous, Sanzo?"

"Tsh. Hardly. I just want a cigarette."

"If that's all it is, then let's get to work."

…

Gojyo leaned back against a wall of the cavern, and then slid down into a sitting position onto his sleeping mat – just to look nonchalant. It was difficult. Night had fallen, and the five levitating balls of flame that Kougaiji had hung in midair around the cavern just made everything that much eerier.

And it didn't help that the eerie half-light was falling on Kougaiji, crouched in front of Goku who had been leaned against the cave like a rag doll. The Prince was examining his power limiter. After the initial hiss-like reaction that he had gotten out of Hakkai and Gojyo when he'd gripped the thing, Kougaiji he restricted himself to touching the golden band with a single nail at a time. For the last however-may hours he had tapped the thing, run either his thumb or forefinger over it, then maybe touched Goku's pulse or lifted an eyelid. For hours now he had literally been doing nothing but prod the stupid monkey. And you know what the really sad part was? He actually seemed absorbed in what he was going.

And right now he was tapping the central groove in its design.

Gojyo tilted his head back against the wall and rolled it to look at the other semi-shades in the cave. Dokugakiji was sitting just a few feet away from him. They'd been talking, he couldn't even remember about what it was now, until Kougaiji had raised _the Imperial Hand of Silence, _which was basically the same thing as Doku's Mute Button. Whatever. His brother was now applying some kind of shine to his sword. Gojyo didn't see the point. It was a demon weapon, after all. It'd just vanish into the other plane until the next time he called for it, and all the dirt on it would just be left behind. Instant cleaning. But then, he wasn't a "Sword Master" by profession.

Gojyo sighed, and rather sensed than saw the silhouette-that-was-Hakkai give him a warning glare across the cave. Tightass.

A little ways from Hakkai, were Yaone and Lirin. The squirt had sprawled out on the floor over Sanzo's sleeping bag, fast asleep and using the seated Yaone as a pillow. Hey, he could think of worse pillows.

.Tap.

Again? How many times was Hair-do going to knock nails with that thing? Gojyo slumped further into the wall. Quite and tense. That was the air. Quiet and tense. Hakuryu was out on patrol. He was small, and would be able to see if some unwanted assassins tried to came along and crash this little private shindig. That could be awkward. Like having your future mother-in-law crash your bachelor's party.

…It made sense in his mind.

Ignoring Hakkai and his Glare-o-doom, Gojyo _clicked _his lighter open, _rustled_ up a pack of cigarettes, and then_ flared _one into life. Whatever. If Prince Precious was as good as he said he was, he could do with the one quiet sneeze.

Gojyo inhaled, and, probably from the pressure of having to keep quiet, almost coughed. This time, however, it was practically impossible to ignore Hakkai, and the fear of death compelled Gojyo to just _hold it in!_

"Alright. Finished."

Gojyo wheezed out. Kougaiji stood.

Dokugakiji just looked at his kid brother with an eyebrow to the skies. "What was _that?_"

"Shuuu-huuup," was all that Gojyo managed.

"Gojyo," Gojyo looked up at Hakkai. Oh he did not like that smile. "Why don't you go get Sanzo for us?"

Oh he was not taking this shit! Damnit Hakkai needed to get over himself and that _one little jab_ about Yaone. I mean, come on! All of the 'do take care's and the 'how are you's and _please!_

Gojyo was scrambling out of the cave at top speed. Because there was _nothing _as terrifying as that feeling that Hakkai was reading his mind and preparing to act accordingly.

"Sanzo. Oy, Sanzo!" Gojyo looked up the ravine. There, just between the two walls of black rock, in the little sliver of sky… was a full moon. He didn't know why, but it made him smirk a little. Down here in the bowls of God-Only-Knew-Where it was the only source of light that splashed here and there and by which he might _find that idiot monk. _

And there he was. Gojyo blinked. And then took another step. Nothing happened.

His Holiness had wedged himself between two rocks that made something of a recliner. A very stiff and uncomfortable recliner. His head had lolled to the side and his right arm had reached up against his left shoulder to clutch at his sutra. Sanzo had retreated from the cave shortly after Kougaiji had begun his examination, well before sunset. Gojyo doubted that he would have picked this stop when it had already, as it was now, become seeped in moonlight.

He looked exhausted. Gojyo studied him from about ten feet away. His face, turned away from the moonlight and touched by shadow, rather than relaxing in sleep as Gojyo knew it usually did, just seemed to have gotten even _nastier._ If that was possible. He was tense and sharp and the bastard looked miserable.

Sanzo's grip on his scripture suddenly tightened, and Gojyo was got just a little edgy that he'd tear the thing. Sanzo gasped in his sleep and squirmed just a little on the bare rock. Gojyo's jaw tightened. He'd seen this before, when he had guarded over Sanzo after the Kami-sama incident. Back then, Sanzo had lost his Maten Sutra. _It's either one of your belongings or the other. You've gotta stop being so careless with your shit._ Gojyo was about to walk over to the man and shake him awake when Sanzo's head jerked to the side, and the moonlight spilled over it.

The light should have made everything that much more stark. It should have done what Kougaiji's fireballs had done back in the cave, and made Sanzo's face more drawn, more wax-toned, and more sallow. Instead, his face eased, and then softened.

And then broke down.

Gojyo heard the dormant hiccups. Had he waited too long to wake him up? Gojyo took another drag from his cigarette, and breathed out. It tasted better in the fresh air. _Whatcha gonna do?_

He'd been meaning to make a ruckus just where he was and alert the monk before he got too close and saw too much. Now, however, he treaded very quietly, wedging his cigarette between his teeth, and slipping off his bandana as he went.

He draped it over Sanzo's eyes, and applied pressure with his hand, letting the bandana seep in whatever it should. Sanzo stiffened under his touch, and Gojyo felt his eyeballs dart under their lids, under the bandana, through the moisture, beneath his fingertips. Then Sanzo did exactly what Gojyo had been hoping he'd do. Very shakily, and very hesitantly he let go of his scripture. He raised his hand, fastened it around Gojyo's wrist, and pulled it away. Gojyo's fingers hooked the bandana as they lifted.

Sanzo's eyes were dry. Gojyo stepped a few steps back, and Sanzo sat up shakily. He was probably aching from having slept on the rock like that. _Idiot monk._ _I swear the kid's stupidity's rubbed off on you_. Though Gojyo wondered if he was really one to talk.

"Sometimes…" he rasped. Gojyo's attention snapped back. Sanzo smirked blearily. "Always… I've wished that the youkai had never stolen my master's Saiten Sutra." He swallowed loudly. "…I never wished that they would have just stolen the Maten one instead."

_If this hadn't been the Maten Sutra, Goku wouldn't have been able to leave._ He didn't have to say it out loud. He wouldn't have said it out loud.

Gojyo pulled out his pack of cigarettes and offered him one. "Hi Lite. Take it or leave it."

…

He had known from the first that Goku was like no other warrior he had ever met. Still, he had always marveled at the simplicity of his beliefs. He fought for himself. Himself.

Now Kougaiji found himself marveling at the boy tenfold. How could he have kept any sort of idea of "himself" with this sort of lock on him? Hakkai had told him that Goku's limiter was formed by the gods… but it was one thing to hear it, and another thing to touch the thing and feel the power and complexity of it. It was like a maze. That little limiter was like a maze of restraints and dead ends. A proper Minotaur's Labyrinth, keeping whatever needed to remain inside, inside. Kougaiji, after spending hours trying to figure it out, had to just give up, and instead concentrate on the one thing he _was _absolutely certain of – the _only _thing one _could_ be absolutely certain of when facing a maze: its entrance.

Gojyo, Hakkai, and Sanzo were now standing around him while he once again crouched in front of Goku. It had been agreed that Hakuryu would remain here with Yaone – just in case they needed to be packed up and driven away fast. Kougaiji couldn't go as far as aiding their getaway.

Behind him the usual goodbyes were being exchanged.

"You'll remember the ladies~"

"And the men. Ya."

"…!"

"Hey, SanzoBaldy! If you see anything cool, can you bring it back for me, 'kay?"

"Where you do you think I'm going? A World Tour? (_And whom are you calling bald…)__"_

"Thank you for agreeing to take care of Hakuryu. It's really very kind of you Ms. Yaone."

"It's the least I can do after you saved me from that militia. Please, just take care of _yourself-"_

"Make sure the path right behind me is clear." Kougaiji once more inserted the nails of one hand into the grooves of the design on Goku's limiter. He began to chant curtly.

"_I call on the Key to all doors_

_My right arm to make seen this Gate"_

He rose slowly, stepping back a few paces. There, at the tips of his fingers, as if pulled from its mold, remained the golden outline of the pattern on Goku's diadem. Carefully, surreptitiously, he brought his left hand to the delicate form, hooked his nails about it as if it, and pull on it gently.

"_The sinister widen the sinister._

_Three souls fly to dubious Fate."_

For a moment nothing but that ominous last line hung in the air. He held his breath. Did it work? It was not a normal chant. But those were the only words he could think to match the desired effect…

Then there was a blast, and for a moment Kougaiji thought there was no way in hell or heaven that he would be able to keep a grip on that design when this blinded. But the light faded. Or rather, it concentrated on a life size outline of the design Kougaiji had held, feet in front of him, between himself and Goku. It was like watching an image on a screen, and he was holding the projector. Two golden half circles were now shimmering in the cave, and it would have been beautiful, if it was not so terribly hard to maintain. He hooked his fingers on the miniature design in his hands once more, as one might hook strings to form a new design, and pulled – the life-size design, _the gate, _opened.

"Hurry," Kougaiji gasped. "I can only hold it for…" Hakkai gave Hakuryu a last pat, Yaone a last smile and was through the door. Through the door and… gone. Though the gateway itself was transparent, when Hakkai went through it… a golden ripple passed around him, and he just vanished. _Goodbye and good riddance_. Sanzo was next, followed by a last goodbye from Lirin, and followed still by Gojyo. Kougaiji actually almost let go of the formation when Sanzo stopped short and the red-head nie ran into him from behind.

_What does he want now!_ Kougaiji gritted his teeth. His arms were beginning to quake despite himself, and sweat was simply _gushed _down the sides of his head.

"Why." Sanzo addressed him. It wasn't a question. It was a demand.

He smirked. "I'll tell you if you get back alive." _Demand rejected._

Sanzo snored. "Oh goody. Something to look forward to." He was swallowed by the upright pool that was the threshold to Goku's mind.

Gojyo gave the whole band a last smirk, a salute to his brother, and took off after his companions.

Ripple.

With a mad gasp Kougaiji flung his fingers apart, ripping to shreds the design they had held. The golden strands shot from his fingers, shot through the great Gate, catching it as spikes would paper, and the whole mass of gold rocketed back against Goku's head which was thrown back at the jolt and knocked against the wall of the cave.

Kougaiji sank to his knees gasping, and sat there, staring at his hands. Vaguely he was aware of Yaone running across the cave to Goku.

"He's bleeding from that," Yaone had tilted Goku's head forward to examine it. "You ought to have cushioned him before you began the process."

"…I wasn't sure of its particulars," Kougaiji answered dully.

There was a gasp. He thought it was Lirin. He looked up to see what the problem was and in the returning half light of the fire balls, he saw the three bodies, now vacant, and no longer obscured by the radiance of the rippling gate, lying on the cave floor. He swallowed. It was one thing to know they would be gone. It was another to see the 'corpses.'

"Kou… your fingers." They were smoking.

Everything hurt so much more now. And his hands… he felt as if they'd been seared and bitten and broken, all in one sensation. He brought his fingers to his face, and skimmed him under his nose. He smelled burnt skin, and felt splintered nails. He wasn't imagining it.

_Oh, do they owe me big time. _

He tried to get back to his feet. He teetered on bent legs, and fell back on his knees painfully.

'Kou!" Dokugakuji was by his side in a heartbeat.

"I'm fine." He said, shrugging his off. He flexed his hands out of habit, now staring at first one and then another discarded form of the Sanzo Party. His arms already shattered, the rest was beginning to smart. What was it then? The price for defying the gods? He smirked, thinking of Homura. _And he was just a rouge god. _

Stilll… there was a thrill to it: to knowing that he had, for a moment, unlocked a gate which the gods themselves had sealed. As one whose magic revolved around fiends and planes and presences, it was a point of personal pride. And as a Prince… well, it was nice to know that, even if he couldn't stand up against that bitch back at the castle, he could always compromise on fighting gods.

_But how on earth are you going to get back, eh? _He fixed his gaze on the mop of gold which struck out, even in this darkness. It would be a strange and unusual end indeed if the Sanzo Party was put to a halt, not by a foe, but by the strongest of their own team.

"_I fight for myself. __**Me!**__ That's reason enough."_

"We'd best make them comfortable for now. Yaone, after you've finished with Goku, could you take a look at my hands?" Everything, _everything,_ had a pro and con to it.

…

"…Spill."

Tenpou looked up at Kenren as they walked.

"Whatever it is your thinking. Spill." They were on their way back to Tenpou's office. They were almost there already.

"It just… rattled me, that's all."

"You got scared, didn't you? That he was going to vanish… back into his world? The real world?"

Tenpou chuckled. "Listen to you, Mr. Know It All. As if you weren't the least bit nervous yourself."

Kenren snorted. "Ya, well, I'll tell you one thing – I wasn't nearly as nervous as someone _else."_

"…He was too scared to even let go of him after that. Wouldn't even let him sit up."

They walked in silence for a while.

"Shit. I feel like we're in some kind of balancing act, and we can't see _whom _or _what _we're balancing against, and we can't control it either! And one wrong step in the wrong direction and-"

"Ssh!" Tenpou froze. Kenren stopped short in the same heartbeat, not because of whatever sound Tenpou had detected. No. He always stopped short because one held one's breathe around the Marshal, just as one held one's breathe around a crouching tiger – unless, of course, one wanted to be skinned alive. That was the effect Tenpou could have on men. The blood ran cold. As Kenren had once said to Goku: "Impulsive." Ha. What an understatement.

Then he heard it too.

It was impossible to say who vanished from whose side first. The two just _evaporated _from the hallway. And they weren't 'splitting up' either. No. That had been a misconception that their opponents had paid for too dearly too often. One thing to know about Field Marshal Tenpou Gensui and General Kenren Taisho was that they worked like a Swiss watch. Completely and utterly in sync.

Which was why Tenpou was completely and utterly thrown off when he heard Kenren's voice coming from the wrong direction altogether.


	11. The Little Differences

**Chapter Eleven**

**The Little Differences**

"This sucks," Gojyo pronounced with certainty, looking around as they all made their way down the corridor.

They were in some kind of funky hallway. It was top-notch fancy and there were columns and everything. And a lot of red coloring too. Made him nervous about dropping cigarette ash. Their arrival had gone completely unnoticed, which was probably to be expected. After all, this was the inside of the monkey's head. Still… Gojyo wasn't entirely clear on the place. After he had walked though that gateway thing he had just materialized into this place. Honestly, he had been expecting more. Maybe some kind of dramatic wind or some freaky memory or maybe Homura back from the dead or… something. He was disappointed with Goku's head!

And there was that. _Was_ it Goku's head? Or was it his past? Or was it both? So were they actually in danger here? Could anyone actually see them here? Really now, he would have loved to just plop down for about forty five minutes and hear Hakkai's theories, because the man was full of theories on this sort of stuff. Hakkai would have been a therapist in another life. He just loved screwing with people's heads. And this trail of thought wasn't calming Gojyo down at all. Nor was the fact that Hakkai had stopped short.

Gojyo stopped short.

When Hakkai stopped short, _believe you me,_ you stopped short.

Gojyo held out an arm to stop Sanzo. The man plowed right on through it. "Sanzo, hold up." He fastened an arm on the monk's robes. Sanzo was about to growl something in return when Hakkai silenced both of them with a curt "Ssh." Sanzo looked from Gojyo to Hakkai and Gojyo felt the monk's shoulder slacken under his grip. Good. He was going to behave. Maybe.

Just as there was a leadership ranking in the Sanzo Party – which Gojyo was not now going to explain in all its complexity because really, when push came to shove, they were all on equal footing anyway – so there was also a ranking of sense. Sound. Smell. Sight. Etc.

Goku held highest ranking there, no competition. When Goku went on edge, they all went on edge. They followed his lead. He was their golden eyes in the dark. He could hear an ambush before anyone else. Could see further than even Hakuryu. He could smell blood more acutely than any of them. Now, without Goku, Hakkai was runner up, and it was his youkai senses Gojyo and Sanzo were following now. Problem was, Sanzo just couldn't help disliking orders. Goku was one thing. Hell, could you really hate orders when they came from the other half of yourself? Hakkai, however…

Well, Sanzo was just going to have to suck it.

"What do you hear?" Gojyo rasped. His throat was dry. He needed a drink.

"Two of them," Hakkai almost mouthed back.

Gojyo sensed there was more. "…And?"

"They know we're here."

Gojyo's grip on Sanzo's shoulder unclenched. They dispersed. No orders. No plan. They all knew the plan. He and Hakkai were going to take these losers down. Sanzo wasn't going to wait for them.

Ah, the teamwork~

…

Kenren stiffened when he heard Tenpou's murmur from just around the corner and down the hall. _"They know we're here."_

Damn. Then these guys were good. Kenren resisted rolling his eyes. He shouldn't be getting into these messes anymore. He was a freakin' memory in a monkey's head. Not even! He was some kind of a… figment! A conscience, Lord help Goku. He really shouldn't be crouching here, ready to jump around the corner like a three year old, about to get himself into another mess.

Kenren smirked. He always had loved that word. _Shouldn't._

Footsteps. Three pairs. All male. All in their mid twenties. He narrows his eyes, staring at the floor in concentration. They had divided. Tenpou would stop the two coming this way. Kenren was going to have to get up after the other one.

. . . Tenpou didn't stop him.

Kenren's eyes widened.

The footsteps passed right through where Tenpou's voice had come from, no resistance.

_What the…_

There was nothing for it. Did Kenren really now want to jump out in front of an enemy about whom he knew nothing and who had passed through Tenpou like a ghost? Admittedly, he had mixed feelings on the matter. Still, he supposed, as he rose from his crouch, it ought to have been consolation to him that, between himself and whomever he has about to face, Kenren was probably the closer of the two to being a ghost.

_He supposed_ it ought to have been consolation to him.

His first thought as he rounded the corner, pistols thrown out in front of him, was:

_Tenpou looks freakishly well kempt with short hair._

For about three seconds of absolute silence that followed, his target stilled to a halt, he was not able to figure out why on earth he'd thought that. Then his brain caught up with what his eyes were seeing.

…

Two pairs of footstep both coming his way. They would pass his hallways in three… two… one…

Tenpou cut his sword through the air in one clean movement. He would have loved to have a proper bout, really he would. It had been ages since he had had a proper spar – however, this was the inside of Goku's mind, and he was not about to play games here. These intruders had gotten into a place that had been sealed away, presumably forever. The magic that had closed Goku's mind and the magic that could open it were both five hundred years old. Anyone who had such powers needed to be sent on their way as quickly as Tenpou could manage.

His metal met metal. A demon powered weapon. A Shakujō. Curious. Not five hundred years old, to be sure, but certainly something that would have been sealed away for some length of time. He raised his eyes to his opponent but all he saw was a mass of hair as scarlet as… as blood. A human and youkai half-breed? Curiouser.

…Now where had he read that word?_ 'Curiouser.' _He was sure it wasn't in the dictionary.

His eyes snapped to follow his ears – to the side. Whoever owned the second pair of footsteps had not paused even for a moment when Tenpou had attached his comrade. Tenpou hadn't even caught a glance of him-

Instinct alone saved him from the sickle that rounded about on a chain and came at him from behind. He ducked just in time, pulling himself into a crouch. The sickle jarred against the metal bar his opponent was using as a staff.

This would end it. Tenpou was about to rise back up, pushing his katana up through his opponent's belly, when he got a good look at the face that was framed by that mass of red hair.

And he sat right down in shock.

…Had it been… and exact copy, he would not have been so surprised. An exact copy would have been a lie. He would have known it for a lie. He would have seen the faint differences it bore from the original. Differences that no master copyist could ever catch. Differences that even Konzen and Goku might not have caught. But this…

They stared at each other, Tenpou sitting and this… this person standing. Not a word passed between them.

And then those strange red eyes widened with an astonishment so identical to Kenren's that Tenpou felt dizzy just looking into them. The Kenren that was not Kenren dropped his weapon, which vaporized before it hit Tenpou in the face, (_Just as Goku's vaporized,_ Tenpou noted vaguely), and himself let out a cry of shock.

At the same time Tenpou heard a twin cry – twin down to the very intonations of the voice – just a few hallways down. As the two cries mingled Tenpou was very disturbed to realize he couldn't tell the voice of his Kenren from the voice of that of this Kenren.

…

"Who the fuck are you!"

Only the height of manners and composure kept Hakkai from mimicking the Gojyo who was not Gojyo who was presently pressed almost bodily against the opposite wall of the hallway, and was holding two pistols with nie-bleached knuckles.

He had seen copies before. Dougon had been a particular fan of shikigami copies, and there had been those copy-mutes they had met a few months ago. Copies were normal. Black haired Gojyo's were terrifying.

Still, as the intruder, he supposed he was the one who needed to explain himself first. "My name is Cho Hakkai. I am a friend of Goku's."

This seemed to calm the short haired Gojyo a little. "Okay… now why do you look like Tenpou? Except… you know, with short hair… and missing half of the glasses."

_Tenpou._ That was the name by which Homura had called him. Hakkai swallowed. This was curious. "Is he a Field Marshal?"

The man across the hall narrowed his eyes at Hakkai in suspicion. "Ya. How'd you know?"

"I've… been told of the similarity." And, anticipating the next question, he continued, "It was the War God Homura who told me."

The man's eyes widened hugely, showing Hakkai just how not-red they were. He would never tell Gojyo just how unnerving seeing this was. "Homura, _the War God?_ Since when?" He seemed to think this information over for a moment until he began again, almost to himself. "I mean, it makes sense. But still, just… wow."

"Goku killed him," Hakkai felt he needed to add. This Gojyo had clearly known Homura, so it seemed the right thing to do to tell him of Homura's present status.

The Gojyo's mouth dropped. "Goku killed Homura?" he said in awe, slowly reholstering his pistols. "You're shitting me."

"Well, Homura did thrash Goku solidly a few times first, but still. The last say was Goku's." It was almost cereal, having this discussion in Goku's head, with this black-haired not-Gojyo. "…Homura was a compelling man."

"Tell truth I didn't know him all that well." The man, still slowly and tentatively, began to walk toward Hakkai, who for some reason couldn't find it in him to make a defensive posture. "I was more familiar with one of his groupies. Zanon."

Hakkai nodded. "That makes sense. Gojyo was the nearest to him out of our lot as well."

"Gojyo? Is he-" the man started, as if remembering something. "Goku's sparring partner! He told me!"

"_Yes!"_ Hakkai said, releasing a tension he hadn't known he'd been holding for how long. Thank God! Goku was well! And he was here. And this man seemed to be a friend. "Homura mentioned the resemblance between the two of you as well, which would make you… General Kenren?"

Kenren smirked, and put out an arm. "The one and only. Well, only Kenren, if not only…Gojyo, you say? Pleasure to meet you at last."

"Yes. Likewise," Hakkai said, a real smile spreading across his face as he took Kenren's hand. "A thousand times over."

…

Sanzo thought his lungs were going to heave out of him, he was running so fast. Gojyo would be fine. The man really_ was_ like a cockroach. Absolutely indestructible. …That went double for Hakkai. _Oh god my lungs._ Sanzo actually had to lean against the wall of the hallway for a moment, gasping for air, clutching at a stitch in his side. He stared at the wall he was leaning on. That was odd. It was as if he was having déjà vu. He could have sworn that… this red color… Had he run down this hallway before? Sanzo shook himself free of the wall and ran on.

He didn't know how he knew where he was going. He just… did. Almost as if- _I've never been here before!_ He gritted his teeth, and skidded to a standstill. For a few minutes he simply stood, waiting for his breathing to quiet. However, with every breath his heart pounded more furiously. He had to wonder about the enemies that Hakkai and Gojyo were now facing. He had no doubt that those two idiots could hold an army if it came at them. But what if the enemy had friends? And what if they came straight for _him._

_As if that's ever been a problem._ He slid his gun from his robes and checked its contents. Five chambers. Five bullets. He was fine. Just fine.

He slid around the corner. At the end of this corridor there was a pair of double doors. Fancy. Fancier than most of the other doors. It took him no time at all the cross the hallway, caution to the wind.

Sanzo stopped before the doors. Smirked, and kicked them open. _Bring it._

…

Goku's ears perked when he heard a ways away metal clash on metal. That was Tenpou's katana. And was that… had that been…? No way. All the same, Goku sat on edge. What made him even more nervous was that he _didn't _hear Kenren's gun shots. What was going on? And then… silence…

_Don't panic._ Honestly? Goku didn't want to alert Konzen. Konzen had just allowed Goku to sit up for himself, and now the two of them were sitting on the bed, both armed with a last cup of Kenren's tea. It was crazy, seeing S- Konzen this shaken. And over what? So Goku had passed out – he refused the use the word 'fainted,' even in his thoughts – So what? He was fine. Just fine.

"You alright now, tiny monkey?" Konzen muttered moodily at him, taking a last gulp of tea.

Goku smirked. He actually didn't mind being called 'tiny monkey.' Sure, he made a big deal of 'monkey' around Gojyo. But here… it was like an endearment from the past. Actually, it _was _an endearment from the past. …Whatever.

"I told you, I'm fine," he stressed. When this had no effect on his old keeper Goku almost laughed. "_I'm_ the one that passed out," not fainted, "and _I'm _cheering _you_ up. Is there something wrong with this picture or what?"

Konzen gave a dignified 'harrumph' in answer, and stood up. "Alright, tea break's over," he said, swiping the cup from Goku's fingers with one fluid gesture.

_Damn, maybe I haven't recovered fully if my reactions are this slow, _Goku thought, staring at his now vacant fingers.And then, "Oy! Give that back!" Goku leapt from the bed and ran after Konzen, "There's still the stuff at the bottom!"

"Those are tea leaves, you animal!" Konzen lifted both their cups out of reach, "They're disgusting!"

"Don't call me an animal!" Goku clawed at the air just below the cups, "And give me back my leaves! I'm a recovering invalid! I need sustenance!"

"You're a black hole is what you are! _And get your hand off of my face!_ I'm not one of your and Kenren's trees to climb!"

The doors to Konzen's rooms were kicked open with such violence that they almost smashed off their hinges. For a moment after Goku could not understand how he had not heard or sensed the intruder. However, as he turned to look at who had entered, he understood everything. The reason he had not registered the man that now aimed his gun directly at Konzen as a threat was the same reason that this same man did not wake up when Goku stole his Maten Scripture. To each other they were not threats. They never had been. How do you register the sun itself as a threat?

Looking down the barrel of that gun, only one thing came to Goku's mind. It was hardly the most tactful plan he had ever come up with. Looking back on it, it was even worse than taking Konzen hostage in front of Kenren and Tenpou. He could have done a thousand things other than what he did now. He could have thrown Konzen to the ground, behind the bed. He could have summoned his Nyoi-Bo and knocked the gun out of his present master's grip. He could have done the cliché movie scenario and put himself between weapon and target, thus taking the critical blow. He could have done _any number of things. _However, he didn't.

He let go of Konzen – on whose influence he later blamed his present actions – and in one mightily bound made his way across the room, wrapped his arms around the offender, and thus bodily compressed the offender's arms, gun and all, against his sides, rendering him momentarily helpless.

No, he realized only moments later. Hugging Sanzo certainly was not the most tactful thing he could have done.

…

**So, I'm sorry. It's just that… I've lost my muse. :( However! I have every intention of getting her back! After all, the Saiyuki Gaiden OVA is coming out~ **

**So ya, just giving you all fair warning that the next chapter might also be slow in coming. (I hope you're not all sick of me yet). I have the main plot in mind, and I also have the comedy skits and petty dramas under my belt. I just… I don't know. Anyone who has ideas that might **_**string it all together,**_** review if you please! And anyone who doesn't have ideas that might string it all together, **_**review if you don't please!**_** :)**

**I hope this chapter was worth the wait. **


End file.
